Tag #154208 - Interview #94325 (Stepan Neuman)

For my parents and my mother’s brother Moricz it was best to go to Uzhgorod where my mother’s family lived and that was annexed to Czechoslovakia [cf. Trianon Peace Treaty] [9]. At that time Tomas Garrigue Masaryk [10] was President of Czechoslovakia. He was very loyal to political immigrants. Czechoslovakia needed to have printing houses on the territory of annexed Podkarpatska Rus [Czech and Slovak for Subcarpathian Ruthenia], as Subcarpathia was called at that time [during the Czechoslovak era it was also often referred to as Rusinsko], to issue newspapers in various languages.

The USA provided funds for Moricz Preusz to purchase polygraphist equipment. Moricz Preusz bought a fully equipped printing house in Russkaya Street [this is the contemporary name of the street] in Uzhgorod from the Lam polygraphist company that went bankrupt and was selling out its property.

Moricz offered my father to organize two newspapers: Vostochnaya Gazeta and Novyie Izvestiya in Czech and Ukrainian [Ruthenian] to publish the Czechoslovakian state governed information on the first two pages and articles of the democratic leftist bias on the remaining space. My father was invited to Czechoslovakia as a specialist in the polygraph business, and he became a major polygraphist and book printer.