Just Don't Turn Around...

by Yan Bielek

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This book is the story of my family life followed by a long and complicated journey to the USA. I write my own story, not a story of a hero. It's not about a famous football player that many of us envisioned in our dreams. My story doesn't involve any spy adventures like the books I enjoy reading. Rather the life I share with you is about a family which was born and uses t...moreThis book is the story of my family life followed by a long and complicated journey to the USA. I write my own story, not a story of a hero. It's not about a famous football player that many of us envisioned in our dreams. My story doesn't involve any spy adventures like the books I enjoy reading. Rather the life I share with you is about a family which was born and uses to live in the communism stricken Czechoslovakia. So much has been written about communism and its gulags, prisons and dissidents who eventually became well known figures all over the world. However, so little is known on the subject of millions of regular people and their daily life. For my readers, who never experienced any type of tyranny is very difficult to understand or feel the brunt of constant pressure from an oppressive government trying to control every step of everyone's life, from the crib to the grave. The main governing tool is a very high level of fear that controls one's thinking, his conduct and religion in open and at the same time the one is trying to create his own identity which must have been hidden from that society. A little bit of open deviation from what is required by the government is heartlessly punished. Agents listening to us are never too far and always ready to throw us into a gulag. We live two lives - one in the open and the other one in the hidden - the real life. My father use to call it the "double-face" life.The fear of repressions reaches a higher level when someone decides not to follow the herd and chooses his own way - way out the country surrounded by barbed wire resembling a huge concentration camp. I choose risking all our lives just like I said to my father the day of Soviet invasion to Czechoslovakia in August 1968: ."sometimes it is better to die standing up than to live life on your knees." I guess I am "lucky" in my own way because I was born under communism and been an inquisitive and observatory nature I learn "ropes, whistles and blows" of that society very well. I employ the "double-face" to my own advantage when secretly arranging the trip out. I think they taught me well and I do not even break a blush when lying into feared faces in order to obtain another signature for a long paper trail. Just a small mistake or imperfection in my plan and those faces can squash me and my whole family like a bug.Stay in refugee camp feels like both hell and purgatory. Hell come up to us by feeling the crash on the bottom of human society, which sometimes tastes worse than living under communism. During this depressive time it takes a lot of personal strength in realizing the difference. We can run away any time because the refugee camp is not surrounded by barbed wire. People without future get "stuck" in the camp for years and in some cases for life. Their behavior hardly distinguishable from criminals deepens our hellish feelings. Purgatory comes from inside out when I find a might and a confidence in our future, away from the rest of our families we leave in the other camp, this time the concentration camp of communism.Seven months in an Austrian refugee camp give us opportunity for thinking about ourselves and our family, providing a new focus for the future life. We come into USA with almost no money, no job prospects and no references. And positively no family, just the four of us.However, we are finally free in any aspect of life and our hard work attitude breaks us free of financial dependency on US government in less than forty days.I believe my story will be good reading for all my friends who encouraged me writing it for years. I tried to record every single detail to my best recollection and it will provide much information for our children and their prospective families when our memories will shade out due to the strength of time.(less)

Hardcover, 332 pages

Published September 28th 2007 by Xlibris Corporation (first published 2007)

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Feb 17, 2010

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