The Dagley Dagley Daily

By Janet Dagley Dagley
Covering the world from the waterfront in Hoboken, New Jersey, USA

ISSN 1544-9114

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Alan Levy, friend of Bohemia (1932-2004)

The American community in Prague lost one of its most senior and most prominent citizens this morning: Alan Levy, the freelance journalist who covered the Soviet invasion of 1968, was later expelled by the puppet regime that followed, and then returned after the Velvet Revolution to edit the English-language Prague Post, died of cancer. He was 72.

Mr. Levy was senior not only in age, but also in the longevity of his connection to Prague. In 1967, he and his wife Valerie moved there with their two preschool daughters for an extended freelance assignment, becoming the first non-Communist American journalist accredited there since 1956. He was there to concentrate on cultural affairs, not to cover breaking news, but when the news broke, he and (during the invasion) Shirley Temple Black were among the few Americans on the scene.

He wrote about it all in a book originally published as Rowboat to Prague and later republished as So Many Heroes, both now out of print:

"The radio, like TV, stayed on the air much longer than even its most resolute diehards expected. At 0736, we'd heard the sound of gunfire outside the Radio building, a woman's voice exclaiming 'This is the end!', and a man's voice saying serenely: 'Remember what we have been telling you. Let our last words be engraved on your memory. Be with us. We are with you.' But then, to everybody's surprise, the voices of Radio Prague were still with us until noon, shortly after an announcer, broadcasting from a studio disguised as a ladies' room, declared: 'Outside a lot of blood is flowing and we don't know how long we can continue. It is too hot here now, but at least our consciences are clear. Be with us, we are with you.'

Then, with scarcely a 120-second station break, Radio Prague yielded to Radio Free Pilsen ('home of the world-famous Pilsener Beer') and Radio Free Ceske Budejovice (Budweis, 'home of the original Budweiser Beer'). Various radio people had spent the morning organizing a legal (the Russians called it 'clandestine') radio network that now carried man-in-the-street interviews ('This is too dirty! Too dirty to touch!'); urgent pleas ("This is Czechoslovakia calling to the world!"); a poem of protest from a group of librarians; and even the message of an 'Extraordinary Congress' of Pilsen elementary-schoolers, meeting in a playground, to the occupation commander. ('We are children. We want to grow up free. You also have children. Please go home and look after your own children. They are very much like us. Don't leave them alone without their fathers.')"

The Levy family didn't leave when that story faded from the headlines. They stayed in Prague until the new government sentenced him to 5,615 years in prison and then gave them 48 hours to leave the country. Even then they didn't go far, settling in Vienna for many years before returning to Prague shortly after the 1989 Velvet Revolution. Mr. Levy became founding editor of The Prague Post in 1991. In the weekly's inaugural edition, he wrote:

"We are living in the Left Bank of the '90s. For some of us, Prague is Second Chance City; for others a new frontier where anything goes, everything goes, and, often enough, nothing works. Yesterday is long gone, today is nebulous, and who knows about tomorrow, but, somewhere within each of us, we all know that we are living in a historic place at a historic time."

Thousands of Americans, myself and my children included, subsequently came to live in Bohemia's magical golden-spired capital (then capital of Czechoslovakia, now capital of the Czech Republic) for a few years after the revolution, and hundreds of those were interviewed by the dozens of reporters who talked their employers into sending them to Prague to interview American expatriates so they could be part of the scene themselves for a few days. So many of those expats were young adults that they got their own acronym: YAPs (Young Americans in Prague). Most, myself included, have since moved on, but we understand all too well how Mr. Levy came to fall in love with Prague and why he remained there in spirit all those years until he could return to his adopted home.

Mr. Levy was as tenacious as a person has to be to not only survive, but support a family as a freelance writer in a troubled foreign land; he was every bit as gentle and amiable and open. It's difficult to imagine a Prague in which there is no possibility of encountering Mr. Levy again. I'd rather believe his spirit will always linger there. All the powers of the Red Empire couldn't keep him away; maybe death can't, either. In any case, his words remain, including more than a decade of weekly "Prague Profile" columns for the Post and his 1993 book, The Wiesenthal File, for which he was named Author of the Year by the American Society of Journalists & Authors.

Our condolences to his family and to the city he loved.

posted by Janet Dagley Dagley @10:32 AM

2.4.04