ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

PERINA: Vaguely. I remember some friends I played with in Zürich where we lived. My
parents told me I picked up basic German, or rather Swiss German, fairly well since
children learn languages quickly but also forget them quickly. Sure enough, I
subsequently forgot it quickly, though some of it seemed to come back when I studied it
much later in graduate school, and later I learned it quite well during assignments in
Berlin and Vienna. But getting back to Switzerland, my parents applied for emigration to
the United States, Canada and Australia, since the Swiss did want us to move on. My
father had a congenital heart condition, for which he was later operated in the U.S., and
he did not pass the physical for Canada which had a rule at the time that all refugee
immigrants had to spend two years working as laborers on farms. Australia was not
favored by my mother, who felt that the distance would make a return to Europe more
difficult, and the U.S. visa was not forthcoming. My parents still believed the Communist
government in Czechoslovakia would not last long and they would be able to go home in
a year or two. This led to the strange episode of our short immigration to Morocco.
The French wanted Europeans to move to Morocco because there was growing resistance
to colonial rule, and many French were leaving. They wanted more Europeans to
populate the country and made immigration there very easy, and even subsidized it. We
took this up and traveled to Morocco in August 1950. We went via boat from Marseille to
Tangier, and then on to Casablanca. Almost immediately, however, my mother got
culture shock and became very depressed. At the beginning of October, we returned to
Switzerland before our Swiss visas expired. The Swiss were not completely surprised to
see us come back. But this was an interlude that I remember because Casablanca, where
we lived, was so different from Europe. I remember markets with parrots and monkeys
and things like that—very exotic things for a young boy. When we returned to Zurich,
my parents submitted visa applications for other places, including New Zealand and
Venezuela, but still hoped for a U.S. visa. This finally came through in January 1951.
Q: Do you recall how this worked? Were you sponsored?
PERINA: We were sponsored by a Czech fraternal organization from the Czech diaspora
in the United States. We did not have any relatives in the U.S., though my father had a
cousin in Canada.
Q: Where did you go?
PERINA: We went from Le Havre in France to New York City by ship on the USS
Washington. I do remember watching from the deck as we arrived in New York harbor,
and my mother pointing out the Statue of Liberty to me. In retrospect it’s almost like a
movie scene but it did happen, and I remember it.
Q: When was this, 1951?
PERINA: It was May 15, 1951. My father always kept records of important dates. We
were met by a lady who was from the New York chapter of the Sokol organization and
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