Tom Gross: I delivered Western jeans to Václav Havel pre-1989
Tom Gross campaigned for Roma rights and was active in the media in early 1990s Prague. However, the Englishman had had some remarkable experiences in the city even before joining the influx of young westerners to Czechoslovakia’s new democracy. These included covert deliveries to leading dissidents in the communist period – and evidently being in close proximity to some of the world’s most notorious terrorists. Gross, who is today a regular visitor to the Czech capital, shared his stories at our studios in Vinohrady.
You were one of thousands of young westerners who moved to Prague in the early 1990, but unlike the vast majority of us you had already been here earlier. Could you tell us about your first time in Prague?
“Yes, it was really quite special in retrospect. My grandmother, although she was born in East Berlin, had spent some time in Prague as a student.
“She had fled because of the Nazis – she was Jewish – and she wanted to return to see both East Berlin and Prague,
“She only had one child, my mother, with whom relations were a bit complicated. I, as her oldest grandchild, was very close to her, so she took me with her.
“We couldn’t initially get visas for East Berlin, so we came to Prague when I was about 12, maybe 13, in 1979, and we stayed at the Intercontinental.
“It was the only nice hotel at that point. It had opened a couple of years earlier – you know, that rather Brutalist modern structure on the river, near the Jewish quarter.
“It was a very memorable trip. It was my first trip, obviously, to a communist country; it was completely different than what I'd seen before.
“We came to Prague when I was about 12, maybe 13, in 1979, and we stayed at the Intercontinental.”
“The hotel was also very empty, there were very few tourists. And one interesting thing is I have a very distinct memory of really the only other people at breakfast on consecutive mornings when we were there at the Intercontinental.
“They were a kind of rather suspicious-looking group, huddled together. Some of them looked Middle Eastern. There were a couple of security service types with them, or watching them.”
Who were these people?
“Well, I later discovered that they were almost certainly the notorious terrorist Carlos the Jackal and some Palestinian terrorists.
“There was a man called Abu Daoud, who was one of the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, and others.
“I saw photos of them some years later, because I was already interested in politics and the Middle East and so on – they rang a bell when I saw the photos.
“Then many years later I read an article in, I think, The Guardian; basically the StB [Czechoslovak secret police] security archives had been opened and, indeed, they said that these very people had stayed for some time in that exact period at the Intercontinental.
“So although I can't be sure, I’m 99 percent certain that it was indeed them.”
Do you know what they were doing here?
“In retrospect I understand that first of all they were hiding out, because they were very wanted by Israel and various other countries where they had perpetrated acts of terror against the citizens of those countries. And I guess there were being given sanctuary by the Czechs.
“What’s interesting is people today who follow international politics know that the Czech Republic is a fairly close ally of the state of Israel, and indeed it also was at the time of Israel’s independence in 1948, when it supplied weapons to Israel in its war of independence.
“But what people don't know is that during the communist period the opposite was true. The Czechs, like some other communist, East European regimes, were very close to let’s call them radical anti-western terrorists.
“I think Yasser Arafat even lived in another hotel for some time, one in Prague 6, I believe. Also Abu Nidal, who was another even more extreme Palestinian terrorist; he was a breakaway from the PLO, who he regarded as too moderate.
“The Czechs, like some other communist, East European regimes, were very close to radical anti-western terrorists.”
“So, I don’t know whether they were just hiding out or they were plotting acts of terror.
“I should also point out – coming from Britain – the Lockerbie bomb; that’s the airplane that blew up over the Scottish village of Lockerbie, for which Colonel Gaddafi of Libya was blamed.
“We later found out that almost certainly the actual perpetrator was a breakaway Palestinian group based out of Syria and they used Semtex, an explosive that came from communist Czechoslovakia.”
Getting back to teenage Tom, your family had some Czech connections also in the UK?
“Yes, my parents were kind of literary figures and among the friends of both my parents was a man called George Weidenfeld, a publisher born in Austria; Lord Weidenfeld.
“He was great friends with a woman called Diana Phipps, who was an interior designer, who I knew to be of Czech origin.
“After the fall of communism she reclaimed her family name, which was Sternberg, and moved back to Czechoslovakia in 1992 and reclaimed her family estate.
“Diana Phipps was friends, I don’t know how, with Olga Havlová, the first wife of Václav Havel.
“George Weidenfeld was friends with Karel Schwarzenberg, who later became Czech foreign minister. They knew the Havels, both of them, Weidenfeld and Diana Phipps.
“They were both refused visas to enter Czechoslovakia by the Communists, as was my mother.
“But I, as a young undergrad, in 1988 and again in 1989, went ‘on holiday’ to Prague. I also went to Warsaw and Budapest in the last days of communism
“And Diana Phipps and George Weidenfeld asked me to bring stuff for Václav Havel and other Czech dissidents.
“I brought stuff for them, first of all basic stuff like some books, a pair of Western jeans, some Western glossy magazines – all the stuff you could not possibly get in Communist-era time.
“I think I actually brought some lingerie for Mrs. Havlová, or possibly Havel’s lover.
“So I met him. He had just come out of house arrest. I also met usually Jiří Dientsbier, who later became foreign minister after the revolution. I met the Czech novelist Ludvík Vaculík. This is in ‘88 and ‘89.
“And that kind of drew me to a kind of emotional connection to the Czechs.”
What were the practicalities of delivering things to them? Was it all cloak and dagger?
“I stayed at the flat of another man, whose name slips my memory, and he arranged the meetings. But no, it wasn’t that cloak and dagger.
“I should point out that I also went in 1986 to Moscow and Leningrad, now St. Petersburg, in the Soviet Union and delivered some stuff to some dissidents there and that was much more cloak and dagger.
“I guess I was a bit fearless. You know I wasn't bringing illegal materials [to Prague] – I was bringing some novels, some jeans, some magazines.
“Whereas in the Soviet Union I actually brought out some encoded stuff on an old-style cassette. It was disguised as a cassette with a label, I think of Pink Floyd or something, that I put in my Walkman.
“Me and the guy I went with, another teenager, were incredibly nervous when we were going through Moscow Airport.
“And after the memory of that, Prague was not so nervous for me.”
What impression did Havel make on you at the personal level?
“Well, I didn't meet him at any great length. I kind of knew who he was. You know I didn't form that much of a personal impression; I already had an impression of him as a freedom fighter and human rights activists.
“But I actually met him again, a year or so after the revolution, and he remembered me.
“It's not a secret that at that time he had a lover who later became his second wife, Dagmar, Dáša, Havlová, and I was friends with her daughter from her first marriage.
“So I met Havel a couple of times with Havel’s later stepdaughter and her mother – and that’s when I got to know him better.
“And obviously he was a very impressive person. There's one issue, though, that I didn't think he was doing enough on, and that was the Roma.”
That's one thing I wanted to ask you about. After you moved to Prague in the early 1990s you became involved in Roma rights and you say that the new Czech political leaders had what you call “gypsy blindness” – that their inherent racism was essentially stronger than their liberalism.
“Yes. The Velvet Revolution was a great kind liberal revolution, at least viewed from Britain.
“And of all the post-communist revolutions, the one in Czechoslovakia was the one we expected most from in terms of liberalism, partly because Havel himself was a great liberal leader – he wasn't a trade union leader, like Lech Walesa in Poland.
“What I realised is that even with people who are liberal on other matters when it came to Roma there was total racism.”
“What I realised is that even with people who are liberal on other matters when it came to Roma – or gypsies as they were more commonly called at the time – there was total racism.
“For example, I went banging on all kinds of doors, including Amnesty International which are based out of London.
“And the people leading the Czech desk in London for Amnesty International were themselves ethnic Czechs and had left some years earlier, under communism – and they themselves shared the same racism as the far right might have done in Czech society.
“I was pretty outraged. Why was I interested in the Roma? My grandfather had helped the Roma after WWII. The Roma had also been victims of Nazi Germany, and he was one of the very few people in the 1950s, as a young lawyer, who helped the Roma.
“I remember when he was 80, and I was 10 that year, some Roma came and gave him all kinds of gifts and presents and so on.
“I always had an interest in the Roma and a kind of soft spot for the Roma. So I was outraged that not only were the Czechs racist, even Havel… he wasn't racist, but he wasn't doing enough in my view or speaking out enough. And I felt very strongly about that subject.”
This is a slight digression, but you had a connection to George Orwell in that your godmother was Sonia Orwell, who was the widow of the great writer.
“Yes, Sonia Orwell, Orwell's second wife, again was a friend of my parents, because my parents were at the heart of literary London, and my mother had worked on a book with Sonia Orwell, editing some of Orwell's manuscripts.
“Sonia didn't actually have children of her own. Orwell had one son by his first wife, but no children by Sonia, who was much younger than him.
“So that also gave me a very keen sense of human rights, because to get given the set of Orwell books, including 1984 and Animal Farm, by Orwell's widow as a kid obviously connected me more than I might have been connected.
“And I think also that initial trip to Prague with my grandmother, when I was 12 or 13, opened my eyes to what is injustice.
“You know, it was like going from a colour movie to a black and white movie, from West Europe to East Europe; it was really grim in those days. Prague was beautiful, but grim and grey and depressed.
“And yes, I think that the Orwell connection also made me… even though I am not only a human rights person – I also do more fun journalism and entertainment stuff and so on – I had a very keen sense of human rights, both because of the Orwell connection and because of that first visit to Prague.”
You worked with Milena Hübschmannová, who was a leading Czech expert on the Roma. What was she like to work with? She was quite well-known I guess, in her day?
“Milena Hübschmannová was before her time. After the revolution she set up the world’s first ever department of Roma Studies here in Prague, at Charles University, I think in ’91 or ’92.
“She had initially wanted to study Sanskrit and Hindu and so on and couldn’t get a visa; the Communists didn’t allow her to go to India.
“The Roma were of Indian origin, they were originally from the Punjab, and she realised that there were linguistic similarities between the Romani language and Hindu.
“She was originally a linguist, not a human rights activist, but when I started doing human rights for Roma – and there was almost no one else doing it at that time; none of the human rights groups were interested – I sought out Milena Hübschmannová as the leading linguist.
“We went together to North Bohemia and other places to interview Roma. She wasn't really a political figure; she was a linguist, but she helped me with the human rights campaigns. There were others too who came with us, but she was an amazing person.
“She was an inspiration to me. Unfortunately she died of a car accident some years later. She was a lovely woman, but ahead of her times with the Roma.
“Milena Hübschmannová was a lovely woman, but ahead of her times with the Roma."
“In the Communist period she handwrote the first ever dictionary between Czech and Slovak and Roma; even though Roma had lived on Czech territories for 600 years, there was no dictionary till she wrote it in the 1970s.”
You told me earlier that the great Czech photographer Josef Koudelka, who has a famous series of photographs called Gypsies, accompanied you when you went to visit communities.
“That’s right. He came with us to Ústí nad Labem, Most, Teplice and other places.
“Also a British film director called Michael Stewart came to make a documentary on what he called The Forgotten Holocaust of Czech Roma; I was an assistant on that.”
But of course Prague in the ‘90s was also a very fun place and I know you did some things that were rather different from human rights activism – including helping to establish the Czech version of Elle magazine in 1994.
“Yes, so I didn't want to just do serious stuff all the time. Prague was so fun back in the early ‘90s, as you know. It really was a unique period.
“I had also worked for a magazine actually even before I went to university; I'd worked for Harpers & Queen in London, which was like Harper’s Bazaar, and I’d also written some articles for other magazines.
“And a friend of mine called Anne-Caroline Brown, who was working for an advertising agency, was given a call by a Czech exile who’d got the licence to set up the first glossy magazine in post-communist Eastern Europe.
“He was called Antonín Hrbek and he’s quite well known now because he’s set up lots of magazine since.
“So Antonín was looking for people and Anne-Caroline introduced me to him at Café Slavia, I remember.
“He hired me as one of the first two people involved and it took about a year to set up. So in 1994 we had a great launch party at Obecní Dům [the Municipal House] and it was really fun.
“This was the era when the first McDonald's opened in Prague. There was all this Western stuff coming and everything was novel.”
“I was the special projects editor for the first year and a half. It was a bit trial and error really, and later on it became a normal thing to have glossy magazines, here and everywhere.
“But this was the era where, for example, the first McDonald's opened in Prague. There was all this Western stuff coming and everything was novel at the time.”
And you were even making music videos.
“Well, I wasn’t making them, but I was an assistant. Because Prague is, was, beautiful, and very cheap MTV Europe used to come over to Prague and film videos.
“And because I was here and I already knew people I was kind of fixer for them. I found locations for videos for MTV Europe.”
What kinds of places?
“Usually they were places in Malá Strana. Some of the backstreets near Prague Castle, some of the quiet streets – they wanted the kind of cobblestones and an old look and so on, particularly up by the Castle and in Malá Strana.
“Also, if I might add, Time Out magazine in London started doing guide books and I was one of maybe six or seven people who worked on the first edition of the Time Out guide book to Prague. I think that was also published in 1994.
“So it was it was a little bit schizophrenic: I was doing some very serious work on human rights, I was banging at the doors of the UN, Amnesty International, the Czech government.
“Because what happened is when Czechoslovakia split, on January 1, 1993, about three days earlier – between the Christmas and New Year period – the Czechs rushed through a citizenship law which basically was designed to make it very hard for any Roma of Slovak origin to get citizenship in the new Czech Republic,.
“Because, of course, a lot of Roma had been moved after 1948, when the Sudeten Germans were expelled, from Eastern Slovakia to housing in West and North Bohemia.”
But weren’t almost all the Romanies in the Czech lands Slovak after WWII?
“Yes. Because the smaller Czech community were murdered by the Nazis. They were at Lety concentration camp, and I also campaigned on that because the Communists had turned this small concentration camp into a pig farm – you cannot imagine anything more insulting.
“So I and others campaigned to stop it being a pig farm.
“In Slovakia in the war Tiso had been the fascist leader of Slovakia and although he was a terrible anti-Semite, and almost all Slovak Jews were murdered, he did not murder Slovak Roma.
“That’s one reason why the Communists redistributing populations after the war – having expelled the Germans – shifted a lot of Roma. So the people being stripped of citizenship were often their children or grandchildren.
“Anyway, in the end, they weren't stripped of it. Again, I had political connections. I got hold of a US congressman called Tom Lantos, a Hungarian Jewish Holocaust survivor who was also sympathetic to the Roma.
“He was a Democrat and he and someone called Benjamin Gilman, who was a Republican, together wrote a bi-partisan letter to Václav Klaus, who was then Czech prime minister, on behalf of the US Congress, telling them to push back on their citizenship law to allow Roma to have citizenship.
“I helped draft that letter for them, and I like to think that was played a role in the Czechs revising their citizenship law.”
Jumping forward decades from that time, today you don't live in Prague full time but you are here quite often. How do you find being here now, all these decades later?
“I left living full-time already by 1995, but I’ve been coming and going ever since; I have a wonderful daughter here, so I'm here for her.
“Look, Prague has normalized. You wouldn't necessarily know it was a post-communist country. It's probably found its natural place in Central Europe rather than communist, East Europe.
“You know it's more similar in some ways to Vienna or Munich than it is to countries to the east.
“Prague has normalized. You wouldn't necessarily know it was a post-communist country.”
“It’s a successful city but it’s, you know, less exciting, I have to say.
“It hasn't got that vibrant feel of post-communist exhilaration, or post revolutionary exhilaration.
“It's still as beautiful as ever, but capitalism has triumphed, for better or worse.
“Prague has kind of settled down, a bit like I have, because I've no longer the young person that I was [laughs]; I know you've also been here since the early ‘90s.
“So maybe Prague has grown up, just like yourself and myself have grown up.”
