Daniela Grollova Spenser, the author of the book Echoes of Exile: A Family’s Odyssey through the Holocaust and Cold War, a deeply personal yet historically grounded account of Czechoslovakia from the 1930s to the 1990s, will be in conversation with Dan La Botz.
In Echoes of Exile, historian and anthropologist Daniela Grollova Spenser offers an intimate portrait of her family’s experience—beginning with her grandmother, who was marked by the tragedy of the Holocaust, her father who was captured to become a prisoner of war in a German camp, and focusing on the lives of her mother, the translator Ruth Toskova and her second husband, the prominent editor and journalist Vladimir Tosek. Active in the cultural and political life of 1950s and 1960s Czechoslovakia, both were key figures during the Prague Spring. Following the Soviet invasion in 1968, they left the country and became part of the exile circles connected to leaders such as Jiri Pelikan. The book concludes with a thoughtful exploration of the relationship between political exiles and Czech society after 1989.
Free and open to the public. Suggested donation: $15. Seats are limited, on first-come first-served basis. RSVP through Eventbrite.
The book was published in Czech under the title Rozpolcená doba, rozptýlené životy za druhé světové války a studeného míru. The English edition was published by the University of Alabama Press, 2025. Receive a 30% discount with promo code BAMA.
The book will be available at the event.
DANIELA GROLLOVA SPENSER, born in Prague, emigrated to England in 1968 after the Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia and to Mexico in 1972. She studied Spanish and Latin American literature at King’s College, London, and anthropology at LSE; she earned her M.A. in Latin American studies in Mexico and a PhD in history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She joined the research centre, Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social, in Mexico City in 1980. Her areas of study have been the history of Mexican and Latin American social and political history, communism and the Cold War. Her main publications include The Impossible Triangle: Mexico, Soviet Russia, and the US during the 1920s (Duke University Press, 1999); she is also the editor, with Gilbert Joseph, of In from the Cold: Latin America’s New Encounter with the Cold War (Duke University Press, 2008). In 2018, Spenser published the biography of a Mexican labor leader, En combate: la vida de Lombardo Toledano (Penguin Random House; in English as In Combat: the Life of Lombardo Toledano, Brill, 2020). Her trajectory earned her the John Simon Guggenheim fellowship in 2007.
DAN LA BOTZ is a retired professor who last taught at the School of Urban and Labor Studies of the City University of New York. He is the author of a dozen histories and novels and a member of the editorial board of the journal New Politics. His latest books include Riding with the Revolution: The American Left in the Mexican Revolution, 1900–1925 and Radioactive Radicals: A Novel of Labor and the Left.
This event is organized by the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences, New York Chapter (SVU), with support of BBLA.