From the Ostrava Mines to the Australian Capital
Boris Gašpar (1930 – 2015), son of a famous Slovak writer and public official Tido Joseph Gašpar, after 1945 found himself on the list of enemies of the Peoples Democratic Regime. In his memoirs, he returns to the 1945 experience, the evacuation of the public and cultural representatives of the Slovak Republic to Austria as well as his experience of the ubiquitous State Security, as seen through the eyes of a 15-year-old boy. As a secondary school student, Gašpar found himself in the restored Czech-Slovak Republic without prospects, he is a second class citizen. In the 1950s, for political reasons he was included in the work units of the auxiliary technical battalion in the Ostrava region. Workplace experiences, life on escape and emigration, study and student life at Madrid University make up the core of Gašpar’s memoirs. He also covers his personal experience and insight of the dramatic fate of Slovak political emigration after 1948 and the life of Slovak students in the complicated intra-political conditions of the post-civil war of Spain.
His book is available at the below links:
http://www.martinus.sk/?uItem=275046
https://www.literama.sk/sk/knihy/300142/z-ostravskych-bani-do-australskeho-velkomesta
