BBLA is pleased to announce that Martina Navratilova receives the 2024 BBLA Award for Unparalleled Service to the Czech and Slovak Communities.
Read More
We are proud to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the designation of Bohemian National Hall – founded as a social hall for Czech and Slovak immigrants in 1896 – as a New York City Landmark building.
Read More
Beginning of January, we rented one of our rooms to a group that does not fit our strong non-political stance, and inadvertently stirred up quite a bit of controversy. Our peaceful existence was hit with a tornado when an avalanche of letters and calls commenting on the event started landing on us.
Read More
BBLA is pleased to announce that Peter Sis, a Czech-American illustrator, author, and filmmaker, receives the 2022 BBLA Award for Unparalleled Service to the Czech and Slovak Communities.
Read More
Make donations to help save lives and democracy in Ukraine! Our recommended non-profits: in the Czech Republic and in the US.
Read More
BY JOSEPH BALAZ
I trust that despite certain challenges the world is facing, you had a relaxing and enjoyable summer. With great pleasure and pride, I would like to invite you to several important events that BBLA will present to our faithful audiences “in person” in September.
Read More
BBLA is pleased to announce that Sir Tom Stoppard, a Czech-born British playwright, is the recipient of the 2021 BBLA Award for Unparalleled Service to the Czech and Slovak Communities. He supported Czech and Slovak dissidents during the harsh times of the 1970s and 1980s.
Read More
We are thrilled to present the 2021 Rehearsal for Truth Theater Festival as it returns to in-person format at Bohemian National Hall. Entitled “Embracing the Inexplicable,” the 2021 edition is conceived as an occasion for our international community of artists and audiences to reconvene in order to heal collectively and embrace the uncertainties amplified by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read More
By Joseph Balaz | As we are heading into the fall, in compliance with the New York City rules, we cannot invite you back for in-person events at our beautiful Bohemian National Hall, not yet. However, BBLA and its member organizations feature events online, so follow us on social media to see what and when happens in our community, and when and how we reopen for in-person events.
Read More
BBLA is thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2020 BBLA Award for Unparalleled Service to the Czech and Slovak Communities—Ambassador William and Wendy Luers. They will be honored on September 24 at the 2020 Annual Gala Celebrating Cultural Diplomacy organized by BBLA and the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation.
Read More
We are delighted to announce that BBLA and the Vaclav Havel Library Foundation (VHLF) will be hosting the 2020 Annual Gala on September 24, 2020. The 2020 Annual Gala celebrates cultural diplomacy in honor of Ambassador William and Wendy Luers.
Read More
Ruzena Bunza, a long-time member of the Czechoslovak Society of Art and Sciences in New York, passed away peacefully in her home on June 23, 2020, just one month shy of her 104th birthday.
Read More
BY MARTIN NEKOLA
Before the First World War, more than 50,000 Czechs lived in New York City. When the moment of the struggle for national self-determination came, these Americans generously supported the anti-Habsburg resistance led by Professor Tomas Garrigue Masaryk.
Read More
Our members and online audiences can enjoy, from the comfort of their home, the 2020 Prague Spring International Music Festival. Eleven concerts will be broadcast online live from five concert halls in Prague and one in Brno, and recordings of legendary performances from previous years will be streamed.
Read More
By Martin Nekola
Exactly one year after the Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, on February 25, 1949, the Council of Free Czechoslovakia (Rada svobodneho Ceskoslovenska) – umbrella organization of the anti-communist exile – was founded in Washington, D.C.
Read More
A special Zoom edition of the festival that offers readings of contemporary plays penned by award-winning European playwrights from Hungary, Slovakia, and Poland who explore current social and political issues in their quest for truth.
Read More
By Claire Nolte
Barbara Kimmel Reinfeld (1935-2020) was born in Prague in 1935 and fled to the West with her family in 1948. They settled in America, where she completed her undergraduate education at Carleton College, and her M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University.
Read More
It is with great sadness that we learned of the passing of Milan Fryscak, longtime professor of Russian and Slavic Studies at New York University and for many years President of the New York Chapter of Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU). He passed away on April 16, 2020. He was a leader and active participant in numerous Czech cultural and émigré organizations for over 40 years.
Read More
The New York Chapter of the Czechoslovak Society of Arts and Sciences (SVU) invites you to their YouTube channel to watch six events that you might have missed: Escaping from Czechoslovakia, Posezeni: Remembering New York’s “Little Bohemia”," 6-Minute Challenge, The Tribute to the Art of the Folksong, 5+1: Jana Jarkovska, and Americans in 1990s Prague.
Read More
By Zuzana Justman
I met Milena shortly after she succeeded in leaving Czechoslovakia in 1961. Milena was always writing. She mainly wrote screenplays of which the best known is the script for "Zapomenute svelto” ("Forgotten Light"), which received three Czech Lion Awards in 1997. She was highly intelligent and well-read and she never lost her sharp sense of humor and irony.
Read More