Special Collections: Czech & Slovak

H. Gordon Skilling (1912-2001) taught political science at the University of Wisconsin and Dartmouth College before accepting a position at the University of Toronto in 1959.  He remained at the University of Toronto until his retirement in 1977.  He founded the Centre for Russian and East European Studies and was its director until 1974.  During this time he published his books Communism, National and International (1964), The Governments of Communist East Europe (1966), and Czechoslovakia’s Interrupted Revolution (1976), as well as many other publications.  His academic career, scholarship, teaching, and frequent visits to Czechoslovakia, made Skilling a pioneering expert on Central and East European history and politics.

Records documenting Skilling's expertise relating to East European studies with particular emphasis on Czechoslovakia and his role in the Centre for Russian and East European Studies. Contains addresses and speeches; manuscripts and publications including related correspondence and reviews; lecture notes; subject files, mainly of associations; sound recording, video and photographs; University of Toronto administrative files including the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, the Department of Political Economy, Committee on International Studies as well as the Centre for International Studies.

Addresses, articles, correspondence, minutes of meetings and financial files documenting Gordon Skilling's activities as a specialist in East European studies, with particular emphasis on Czechoslovakia.

Bibliography on communism in Czechoslovakia and the history of the Czech Communist Party, 1918-1958; files pertaining to Gordon Skilling's publications Charter 77 and Human Rights in Czechoslovakia, "Socialist Opposition in Czechoslovakia" (proposed), and Samizdat and An Independent Society in Central and Eastern Europe (1988), including correspondence with Jan Kavan.

Manuscripts, correspondence, addresses, lectures, conference files, subject files, greeting cards and index cards documenting Gordon Skilling's teaching and research interests in East European affairs, with particular reference to events in Czechoslovakia.

Diaries, notebooks, personal and research correspondence, manuscripts, articles, press clippings and photoprints relating to Dr. Skilling's trips to Eastern Europe, his personal life and his research and writings.

Correspondence, addresses, lecture notes, minutes of meetings, memoranda, reports, manuscripts, publications, notes and press clippings documenting Professor Skilling's interest in Eastern Europe, particularly Czechoslovakia, and his association with the Commission on Security and Co-operation in Europe and the Royal Society of Canada. Also includes consultant files, foreign language clippings and collected papers on Czechoslovak history and politics.

Personal records of Gordon Skilling, relating primarily to the Czech Republic, including professional and private correspondence with colleagues and friends, including Vilem Precan (1969-1996); drafts of his memoirs Education of a Canadian and articles, with covering correspondence; addresses; conference papers, photographs.

Personal records of H.G. Skilling, relating primarily to his interest in Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. Includes early correspondence with his wife Sally, correspondence with friends and associates in Czechoslovakia, grant applications, itineraries, subject files relating to human rights groups, publishers and the medal that he received from the Royal Society. The records also include a printout of Skilling's autobiography entitled The Education of a Canadian: My Life as a Scholar and Activist.

Records documenting the history of the family of Harold Gordon Skilling, including his wife, Sara (Sally) and his own life and career. Sous-fonds I: Skilling family. The emphasis is on Gordon's father, William Watt, his uncle, Ernest (a Shriner), and his brothers Donald and William, who fought in World War I (Donald was killed in action). Sous-fonds II: Sara (Sally) Bright Skilling. Her education in the United States, her travels with Gordon in Eastern Europe in the 1960s and her skill in entertaining. Sous-fonds III: Harold Gordon Skilling. The emphasis is on the research and writing of his books on T. G. Masaryk and Alice Masaryk, on his travels, especially in Eastern Europe, and on the seminars he held in his residence during the last years of his life. These records consist primarily of correpondence (personal and professional, including with Vilem Precan (1993-2000) and Vaclav Havel), diaries, drafts of books and articles, reviews, addresses, index cards, scrap books, and photo albums.

Personal records of H. Gordon Skilling, consisting of: Masaryk medal awarded by the Czechoslovak Association of Canada, 1985; certificate, case and medallion relating to honorary degree awarded by Charles University, Prague, 1990; Komensky medal awarded by Komensky University, Bratislava, 1990; certificate and medal for the Order of the White Lion, Third Class, Czechoslovakia's highest honour for non-citizens, awarded by President Vaclav Havel on Professor Skilling's 80th birthday, 28 February 1992.

Records of conferences and meetings attended; drafts of and correspondence regarding articles written; correspondence relating to the writing of Communism, National and International and Governments of Communist East Europe; personal files (1961-1979) and correspondence (1974-1983); lecture notes as visiting professor, Columbia University, 1952.

Lecture notes on international politics and international organization, University of Wisconsin and Dartmouth College (1941-1959); files for courses on Soviet politics at Dartmouth College and the University of Toronto; lecture notes for courses on Eastern Europe and comparative communism at the University of Toronto; lecture notes by Hazard at Columbia University (1949-1950).

Addresses, radio scripts, correspondence, lecture notes; files on the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (1980-1981); files relating to the publication of Interest Groups in Soviet Politics (1971).

Correspondence, articles, reports, and related material on East European studies at the University of Toronto and elsewhere, including a study of the U.S. Helsinki Watch project prepared by the Ford Foundation.

Addresses; correspondence with students, 1970-1986, and on the Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto, 1980; course outlines in political science, 1960-1980.

Josef Škvorecký was born in Czechoslovakia in 1924 and immigrated to Canada in 1969. He has continued to write while living in Canada and also taught English and Film at the University of Toronto’s Erindale College. This collection contains books, manuscripts and typescript drafts of novels, as well as travelogues, literary essays, film scripts and personal correspondence.  The collection is acquired from the author on a continuous basis since 1973.

The collection includes correspondence, poems, and short stories written by late 19th-century Czech writers, including members of the "Maj" group. Some of the writers represented are Josef Svatopluk Machar, Adolf Černy, Eliška Krásnohorská, František Táborský, and the composer Karel Weis.

The Department of Biochemistry at the University of Toronto was founded during the 1907-1908 academic year.  It was the first biochemistry department in Canada and one of the world.  George Connell served as the sixth chairman of the department from 1965 to 1970, and went on to hold major administrative positions at the University of Toronto, including president from 1984 to 1990.

The administrative files of the chair of the Department of Biochemistry, George Connell include, among many other files, material about refugee scientists from Czechoslovakia from 1968 to 1969.

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A digitized, fully searchable and hyperlinked repository of visual testimonies by almost 52,000 survivors of genocidal wars. The vast majority of the testimonies in the USC Shoah Foundation’s Visual History Archive are from Jewish survivors of the Holocaust (1939-1945), as well as other Holocaust witnesses, rescuers, and aid providers.

Among the main subjects discussed in the interviews are geographical locations, prominent figures, names of family members and other people, prewar Jewish life, religious practice, cultural life, acts of persecution and prejudice, camps and ghettos, deportations, massacres, means of adaptation or survival, resistance, rescue and aid efforts, and postwar emigration and immigration.