Charles Ota Heller

The formal book tour finished, Sue and I are free to spend the weekend with friends. Saturday is devoted to time with my distant cousin, Sylva Pustina (right in bottom photo), her husband Karel, and son Daniel (left in photo). All escaped from the communist regime and reside in Germany. Sylva and Karel have been at…

I have Friday morning off. Sue and I walk to Josefov, site of a memorial where the names of 77,000 Czech victims of the Holocaust are printed on walls, in the manner of the Vietnam War Memorial in Washington. The martyrs are listed by their home towns. Each time we go, I find another member of…

I have reserved most of Thursday for our traditional loop of Prague-Kralupy-Melnik-Kojetice-Prague. My father was born and grew up in Kralupy. Melnik castle sits high on a hilltop, overlooking the confluence of the nation’s two great rivers — Vltava (Moldau) and Labe (Elbe) — and overlooks the mountain Rip, which is important both in the…

Following an interview with the magazine “Sedmicka” (“Seven”) — one of many periodicals owned by my publisher, Mlada Fronta — I change into the new suit I had bought expressly for the Big Occasion. Sue and I walk (in Prague, one nearly always walks) to Wenceslas Square and to the Luxor bookstore, where the book…

It’s time to get to work. At 8 am, I meet with Antonin (Tony) Koci and Magdalena Potmesilova of Mlada Fronta, my publisher. They brief me about the national TV show, called CT24, on which I will appear this morning at 10:10. The show is the equivalent of America’s morning shows, and my segment will be ten…

Today is a day off, in preparation for a superbusy week. It’s Easter Monday, a national holiday in the Czech Republic. The irony is not lost on me: the world’s most atheist (nearly 80%) nation celebrates Easter Monday! That’s a subject I need to explore at another time. Sue and I spend the day at…

We check into the Marriott hotel near the Municipal House in Prague. The moment I’ve been anticipating for weeks arrives. The bellman comes out of the baggage room with a stack of books, which had been sent there by my publisher, Mlada Fronta. They’re wrapped in clear plastic, five to a package. I want to…

American Center’s announcement: Prague: A Long Journey Home by Charles Ota Heller Ota Karel Heller was a Czech boy whose misfortune it was to be born a Christian-Jewish hybrid three years before a war which claimed the lives of six million people with whom he shared a common bond – of which he was totally…

This is an exciting time for me. The official launch of my memoir, Dlouha cesta domu (Long Journey Home) is only two weeks away. I will be signing at the Neoluxor, the largest bookstore in the country, in Prague on Wednesday, April 27. Various other signings and interviews in Prague and the surroundings have been…

On Thursday, March 24, I will participate in a panel discussion at the Czech Embassy in Washington. We will talk about our experiences as Czech and Slovak immigrants trying to “make it in America.” I’d like to invite interested readers of this blog to attend. The Embassy’s invitation follows: Dear Friends of Czech Culture: The…