Cold River eBooks

Cold River: a survivor's story is about a man's desire for freedom during a time when none existed. Jozef describes the village in which he grew up with such emotion and sadness that the reader can hear the snow crunching beneath his expectant mother's feet as she makes her way through the snow drifts. This story is fact, not fiction, when you are finished you will know what it is like to taste freedom for the first time. And perhaps feel pain of its cost.

The Cold River: a survivor's story Bohemian youth mixed with a desire for freedom defies even the unbreakable barriers such as the Iron Curtain. One day, seventeen years after he escaped from Czechoslovakia, Jozef Imrich’s daughter asks, “Why did you leave your mummy, daddy?” The innocent question sends Jozef on a journey through powerful memories frozen within him. In 1968, Czechoslovak people welcome the changes of the glorious Prague Spring and dream of everlasting freedom. But, the Mittle European history has a way of doubling back on its natives. One summer night the country is invaded by the Russian. In the winter of 1969 a young man called Jan Palach burns himself to death in front of the statue of St Vaclac in Wenceslaw Square. Dissidents who wear western clothes or listen to Radio Free Europe are enemies of the state. Jozef’s parents are not allowed to visit to family in France and West Germany, even if they could afford the trip. Jozef’s older sister Aga dies of leukemia at the young age of twenty-two. Two years after Aga’s death, in 1977, Jozef’s other sister Gitka is sacked from her teaching profession when she repeatedly ignores orders to stop attending church services. In the same year Vaclav Havel and a handful of brave souls sign Charter 77 and tell the western press about the realities of life in the plastic paradise. They end up in prison. George Orwell’s 1984 is a light reading compared to true stories that Jozef reads in samizdat magazines. Jozef and his friend Ondrej Brejka speak often of their determination to leave their country, family and friends. During their two year compulsory national service in the army, Jozef and Ondrej befriend another soldier Milan Dlubac, who reveals escape plans he devised while serving as border guard on the Iron Curtain. Milan Dlubac is deeply familiar with the Austrian landscape on the other side of the border. He tells Jozef and Ondrej stories from the front line: the daily routine at the fortified layers of Iron Curtains, the curtain of land mines, barbed wire fences, killer guard dogs, an army of soldiers. After each man celebrates his twenty-first birthday, and they plot the time and place of their escape: the seventh day of the seventh month at fourteen hours, using symbolic numbers from Charter 77, the human rights movement led by Vaclav Havel. The Czechoslovak government thinks no one would dare contemplate crossing the most heavily patrolled borders in the world. They suppose most people will cross the weaker borders of the lost tribes such as Yugoslavia, corrupted by the influence of the Western democracy. But the borders of the true believers? Never! Few would dare dream about crossing such a border, unless, of course, you have inside knowledge and contacts. Milan has both. They will have only one chance to disarm the army guards at the gate and drive through an army barracks without alarming others. Their set day is sunny. Not one of them, even for a moment, thinks it might rain. But it does and the swollen river makes it impossible for them to cross, yet it is impossible to go back ...

Cold River by Jozef Imrich - Get eBooks