Eva Urban, a history teacher at WHS, immigrated to the United States from communist Czechoslovakia with her family when she was only a few years old.

“The number one priority that my father had for us to leave was so that his kids could get educated,” said history teacher Eva Urban.

Urban, born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia in 1975, immigrated to the United States from Czechoslovakia when she was only a few years old.

Although she only has a few scattered memories of leaving her native country, Urban remembers emigrating with several family members including her father, mother, brother, aunt and cousin.

At the time, Czechoslovakia was under a reign of communism. The government could not reward workers with pay raises, so they rewarded them with vacations.

“My father was an engineer, and he was a very hard worker, so he would get these vacations all of the time,” Urban said.

The day that Urban’s family was planning to flee the country, Urban’s father told their other family members that they were going on a vacation.

“He told everyone we were going on vacation to Yugoslavia, and even my mother’s parents thought that we were going to vacation to Yugoslavia. Absolutely nobody knew,” said Urban.

At first, Urban’s mother did not want to go because if she left during the communist regime, she risked never seeing her parents again. Urban’s mother had to choose between being separated from her children or her parents. She chose to flee with her children and husband, but decided to take her younger sister with her.

“Literally two days before we left, my mother told her sister that we were going to escape,” said Urban.

Urban’s aunt also brought Urban’s cousin, Patrick. Her aunt was fleeing an abusive husband.

“My aunt had a much harder time, however, because she was fleeing her husband, who she was not divorced from, and she was taking her child,” said Urban.

Urban’s family looked to black market to get the papers necessary to cross the border. Urban recalled that when she and her family went to cross the border, it was pouring rain, and the man in charge of checking the papers did not want to stand outside in the rain, so he let them go easily.

“I remember my mom being so relieved that we made it through,” said Urban. “The repercussions of trying to escape were incredible.”

Once they crossed the border, Urban’s father declared them to be political refugees under the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The family lived in a refugee camp for about six months before applying to immigrate to the United States, Canada and another country in western Europe.

“Because we were fleeing a communist country, which the United States was opposed to at the time, they took us in with open arms,” said Urban.

Upon entering the United States, Urban’s family was adopted by a Slovak family in Colorado. Today, Urban’s parents host other immigrants in their house.

Although Urban’s family was able to make it out of Czechoslovakia and help others do so, her family was persecuted by communists because they left.

“Now I don’t think my family is resentful as much for the fact that they were persecuted by the communists for us leaving, but for the fact that my father had the guts to do it, and they didn’t,” said Urban. “I think my father sets a good example for going out and taking some risks.”