"I think my dad probably spoke Czech too. I didn't even know he spoke Czech, but when I was studying in the Czech Republic, I married Jiřina and we went to Bolivia. I wanted Jiřina to meet my uncle, who was living in Bolivia at that time. My father had passed by then but my uncle was still alive. We went to visit him in the town where he lived, Cochabamba, and when we came to his house and he received us, I said, 'I want you to meet my wife, but she doesn't speak Spanish.' He asked what language she spoke. I said she spoke Czech. He turned to her and started speaking Czech. I was utterly surprised. Then I learned that my father, my uncle and his family had to flee the Russians from where they lived, from Drohobycz. They fled to Prostějov, lived there for a few years and probably spoke Czech."
"My father came from Poland; he was Polish and a mining engineer. One day on holiday in Berlin, circa 1934, he met a man who asked him what he was doing as a mining engineer in Germany. He said he was on vacation. He asked him, 'Why don't you go to Bolivia as to work in mines where they mine for silver, tin, tungsten and things like that?' My father said he didn't know. The man said, 'You could earn as much as a thousand dollars per month.' When my father heard that, he almost fell over because he wasn't making a thousand dollars in six months, so he accepted. He went to Bolivia where he started a family and I was born. My mother was a lady, her family owned maybe two large farms where with lots of sheep and livestock, and she was the daughter of the farm owners. She met my father who went to a nearby village to get food. It was near the mine where he worked. That's where he and my mother met, a relationship was formed and eventually they got married."
"I can't swear now that it was that way, but do I think the fact that it was a socialist country attracted me. At that time, every young person in our country was naturally anti-American; they were our exploiters and so on. Politicians made these pigeonholes and we went along with that view. Thus, what was communist or socialist was the best. The fact that Czechoslovakia was a socialist country informed my decision to come here."
Emil Liebermann was born on 6 November 1937 in La Paz, Bolivia, the elder of two children. His father Wilhelm Liebermann came from Poland and moved to Bolivia to work as a mining engineer. His mother, Nelly Galleguillos, came from a family of landowners who raised sheep and sold sheep products. After graduating from public high school in 1955, Emil went on to study at the Technical University in Oruro. After graduation, he obtained a government scholarship to continue his postgraduate studies, for which he chose Czechoslovakia. He worked at the Mining University in Ostrava from 1959 to 1963. In 1961, he met Jiřina Kuklišinová who was a conservatory teacher; they went to the same canteen. They became close, married in 1963 and had a daughter. Emil Liebermann finished his studies and his visa expired in 1966. Jiřina Liebermannová was pregnant with her second daughter. He returned to Bolivia where his wife came to see him in 1967. Their third child, a son, was born in Bolivia. They returned to Czechoslovakia in 1976. Emil Liebermann‘s next busienss pursuit took him to Mexico where he and his family moved in 1983. He worked in the field all his life, participating in research in the El Mutún region of Bolivia, for example, and teaching at universities. He and his wife returned to the Czech Republic permanently in 2017 and lived in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm in 2021.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
