A Durango man who spent 20 years under communist rule in the former Czechoslovakia will describe his experiences Thursday – 45 years and a day after Warsaw Pact allies invaded his country.
The presentation of Frank Fristensky, a personal trainer, is called “Life Behind the Iron Curtain.” The talk is scheduled to start at 6 p.m. at the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Durango.
Fristensky, born in Olomouc, Czechoslovakia, (now the Czech Republic) in November 1948, will give a brief history of his native country, from its creation in 1918 out of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy after World War I through the Nazi takeover in 1939 and the end of World War II in 1945.
The country was liberated from the east by the Soviets, but independence was short-lived, Fristensky said. In 1948, communists took control of the government, meaning it was a de facto Soviet satellite.
“I grew up knowing nothing about anything outside the country,” Fristensky said. “We were brainwashed and lived without free speech, unable to travel or read what we wanted.
“We were prohibited from listening to the Beatles or the Rolling Stones,” Fristensky said. “But we listened in secret.”
Fristensky’s grandfather lost his farm under communist rule. As an aside, his grandfather’s brother, Gustav, was a champion Greco-Roman wrestler and strongman in the early 20th century.
Frank Fristensky’s father was an electrical engineer who worked for a government-controlled company.
Fristensky had just graduated college with a degree in architectural design when the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact allies, worried about anti-Communist restlessness, invaded Aug. 21, 1968.
Fristensky at the time was doing two years of compulsory military service when his father sent word that he was needed at home. A month later, he boarded a train for Vienna, Austria, and was told to wait there for his parents and two younger brothers.
His mother, who was Jewish and survived a Nazi concentration camp – although much of the rest of her family perished – refused to live in Austria, Fristensky said. The family obtained asylum in Switzerland and spent the next decade there.
Frank Fristensky, who had earned a degree in exercise physiology, emigrated to the United States in 1978.
Jana Freeburn, a native Czech who now lives in Durango, agrees with Fristensky’s bleak memories of their homeland under communism.
“I didn’t know any other life,” she said. “We didn’t have material things, although that doesn’t make life perfect. But I knew from my parents, who listened to Radio Free Europe, that it wasn’t right.”
Czech radio and television news and history books were slanted, Freburn said.
“My home town, Plzen, was liberated from Nazi Germany by the U.S. Army in May of 1945,” Freeburn said. “However, my school history books would state that only the Soviet army liberated our country.”
Although there were limitations on travel, she enjoyed more liberty than Fristensky. Born in 1969, she won a spot on the Czech national kayaking team at age 16, and traveled to a number of European countries.
Freeburn met her future husband, Mike Freeburn, now assistant principal at Durango High School, in Europe. She came to visit in 1990 and the couple married the next year.
Czechoslovakia, on Jan. 1, 1993, peacefully transitioned into two component states, the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic.
daler@durangoherald.com
