Category: Czechoslovakia

California Hockey Players Lead Way on Slovakia’s Hlinka-Gretzky Roster

USA Hockey on July 24 named four players from Orange County and one each from Los Angeles County and Northern California to its under-18 select roster for the upcoming Hlinka-Gretzky Cup in Slovakia. The tournament, named in honor of former Czech hockey star Ivan Hlinka and Canadian icon Wayne Gretzky, is set for July 31–Aug….


Czech Who Escaped Soviet Bloc in Ultralight Plane Now Lives in an Airplane Hangar in Middle of Nowhere

The man who flew over the Iron Curtain to escape communist Czechoslovakia in 1984 came to America, but delivered the biggest political irony when he fled the blue state of California in 2017, seeking a more libertarian lifestyle in the middle of the Utah desert. Today, Ivo Zdarsky, 62, jokes that if he had to…


Horror, Heroism, and a Woman Named Heda

The last hundred years have brought humanity the bitter fruits of totalitarian regimes. Soviet Russia, Nazi Germany, Communist China, Cambodia, Cuba, and so many other places have served—and some still serve—as the killing grounds of raw ideology. Dachau, Auschwitz, and the Gulag are names known to most of us, but for every one of these…


Film Review: ‘Servants:’ Noir Cold War Thriller

The Bible cautions Christians that they cannot serve two masters (see Matthew 6:24), but the state-sponsored Catholic organization Pacem in Terris (PiT) instructed member clergy to do exactly that in Czechoslovakia under communism. Adopting the language of the international peace movement, the ostensibly religious body was really a means for the state to monitor and…