Juraj Slavik (OW 1943)

(13 October 1929 – 10 June 2022)

Below we reproduce an edited version of an obituary from Juraj Slavik’s online memorial page.

Juraj, also known to friends and family as George, Duro, Dickey and Pop-Pop, was born in Prague, Czechoslovakia on October 13, 1929, to his father, Juraj Michal Daniel Slavik, JD, the Czechoslovak Minister of Interior and his mother, Gita Ruhmann Slavik.

Juraj spent his early youth in Prague and enjoyed many outdoor activities in the High Tatra Mountains of northern Slovakia. In 1936, Juraj’s father was sent to head the Czechoslovak diplomatic mission in Poland, with whom relations were strained because of both countries’ claims to parts of Upper Silesia. Juraj attended the Lycee Francais de Varsovie [the French School in Warsaw] but, in light of heightening tensions, was sent to school in Switzerland just before the outbreak of World War II. After brief stays in Belgium and then France, Juraj spent most of the war in Britain, first with his parents in London (where his father was a member of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile) and then as a boarder at Magdalen College School in Oxford and the Czechoslovak State School of Great Britain in Llanwrtyd Wells, Wales.

Following World War II, the family briefly returned to Czechoslovakia before moving to the United States where Juraj’s father served as the Czechoslovak Ambassador to the United States (as well as to Haiti and the Dominican Republic) until 1948, when Ambassador Slavik resigned his position in protest of the Communist coup in Czechoslovakia. While in Washington, DC, Juraj attended and graduated in 1948 from Woodrow Wilson Senior High School.

Juraj attended Deeps Springs College near Bishop, California, for two years before completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in Philosophy at Dartmouth College in 1953. After volunteering for the draft, he proudly served as a member of the US Army between 1953 and 1956. He initially trained as a tank gunner in the 3rd Armored Division but after the Army discovered he spoke eight different European languages, he was assigned to the 532nd Military Intelligence Battalion in Munich where he debriefed Czech, Slovak and many other refugees who crossed the border into West Germany.

Following his military service in Tennessee and Germany, Juraj returned to Washington, DC where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University in 1957 and then joined the Department of Commerce shortly before beginning his almost 40-year career with Governmental Affairs Institute (GAI) and later Visitor Program Service (VPS, a part of Meridian International Center) serving the needs of the U.S. government’s cultural exchange programs under the United States Information Agency (USIA) and the Department of State.

Upon his retirement in 1999, Juraj devoted his time to various Slovak, Czech and Eastern European focused organizations, including Friends of Slovakia, the Czechoslovak National Council of America (CNCA), the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) and the Central and East European Council (CEEC). He also cataloged and archived his father’s personal and diplomatic papers that were provided to Slovak and Czech political historians in support of the writing of scholarly histories of Ambassador Slavik’s contributions to Slovak and Czech democracy.

He married Julie Constance Bres in 1961 and they have two sons, Juraj Michal Daniel Slavik, II, and Lieutenant Colonel William Nicholas Allen Slavik, USMC (retired).

He was an avid traveler, a devoted gardener, and an enthusiastic supporter of his children and grandchildren’s academic, artistic, and athletic pursuits.

Juraj is survived by Julie his wife of 61 years, his sons Michal and Nicholas, and two grandchildren, Cassidy Erin Slavik and Delaney Madison Slavik.