In one of my recent Gazette columns, I described how I became a translator to a Soviet general in Budapest, Hungary, during the last phase of the Second World War.
Being fluent in Czech and Slovak languages as well as Hungarian, and speaking a smattering of Russian, I was appointed as the translator to a Soviet general commanding a combat division fighting German SS troops in the street of Budapest.
My position enabled me to move freely in the Soviet-occupied city. This was a special privilege because the Soviet military police set up dragnets in the streets of Budapest to replace the thousands of escaped Hungarian prisoners of war by capturing new men. They were shipped to the Soviet Union to do forced labor to help rebuild the country. Thousands of those Hungarian prisoners of war died in captivity.
No Hungarian man walking the streets of Budapest was safe from being shipped to the Soviet Union unless he had a “bumashka” (an official document). I had one, testifying that I was serving as a translator for the Red Army Division Headquarters. The document was signed by the general and bore a large official stamp.
This also gave me free access into the newly opened Czechoslovak Embassy in Budapest.
Dozens of people, former Czechoslovak citizens, lined up daily in front of the embassy to obtain certificates of Czechoslovak citizenship. These certificates would protect them from being shipped to the Soviet Union as replacements for escaped Hungarian prisoners of war.
During one of my visits to the Czechoslovak Embassy, I spotted a young man waiting in line, looking totally forlorn. I asked him what was troubling him?
“I had just escaped by a hairline, a Soviet dragnet,” he said. “I need a certificate of my Czechoslovak citizenship, desperately.”
I took him into the embassy and asked an official to assist him. We parted ways.
Fast forward.
Two years later, I went to the Czechoslovak Foreign Ministry in Prague to present my credentials as a foreign correspondent for Hungarian newspapers. The official in charge, the head of the department, was Victor Rybar — the man whom I had helped in war-torn Budapest to obtain his certificate of Czechoslovak citizenship.
Once again, fast forward to 50 years later.
Following the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Communist Czechoslovakia and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the U.S. Information Agency invited 12 Czechoslovak editors and top journalists to America to participate in its project, “Journalism in the United States.”
The program was designed to allow the visitors to explore the relationship between the media and politics and the concept of an independent press.
The monthlong tour included a seminar at William & Mary’s School of Law on how to protect press freedom. I was recruited by William & Mary to serve as a translator.
During a lunch break, I was seated next to one of the leading members of the group. He was the editor-in-chief of the Czechoslovak Television’s educational department. His nametag identified him as Stefan Rybar.
I asked him whether, by any chance, he was related to Victor Rybar, a former Czech government official?
“He is my father,” Stefan Rybar replied.
He then shared with me his father’s odyssey through decades of communist rule.
As a young, idealistic man, Stefan recalled, his father joined the Communist Party. After Nazi Germany’s occupation of the Czech lands, Victor was high on the Gestapo’s list of wanted men. He fled to Hungary, living there under an assumed name. Following the liberation of his homeland, Victor returned to Prague. He became an official in the foreign ministry. Following the 1948 communist coup d’état, as a pre-war Communist Party member, he was entrusted with increasingly higher positions. By the time my wife and I escaped from Communist Czechoslovakia in 1954, Victor Rybar was Czechoslovakia’s consul general in Istanbul, Turkey.
“In 1968, my father, always an idealistic communist, became a supporter of the newly elected first secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubcek,” Stefan said. “Dubcek launched a reform movement called the Prague Spring, or ‘Socialism with a Human Face.’ However, the effort to reform the regime ended abruptly when the Soviet Union and several Warsaw Pact members invaded Czechoslovakia. The hardline communists took over.”
Victor Rybar was dismissed from his job and prevented from obtaining any meaningful work. He eked out a living by standing on street corners selling maps of Prague to tourists.
The 1989 Velvet Revolution that reversed history found Victor Rybar too old and sick to do more than observe how his son, Stefan, became a leading champion of free speech and independent press in the now democratic Czech Republic.
Frank Shatz is a Williamsburg resident. He is the author of “Reports from a Distant Place,” the compilation of his selected columns. The book is available at the Bruton Parish Shop and Amazon.com.
