I did things in America that I couldn‘t do anywhere else.
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Petr Bísek was born on September 20, 1941 in Prague into an evangelical family of Lydie and František Bísek. He grew up alongside three siblings. In 1958 he graduated from high school. The regime made it impossible for him to study at university, and he trained as a typesetter at the publishing house Naše vojsko. In 1963 he married Věra Vorecká. The couple decided to emigrate and left for Sweden in June 1965, where they broke away from the tour. They lived and worked in Malmö for half a year, from where they sailed to New York in late November and early December after obtaining visas. In their absence, they were sentenced to 18 months‘ imprisonment without parole in Czechoslovakia. In New York, the witness began working as a typesetter for the weekly Americké listy. In 1970, the couple had a daughter, and a year later bought a house in Glen Cove, Long Island, where they lived for the next 44 years. In 1974, the Bíseks had a son. In 1986, the witness founded a typography studio and published Americké listy beginning in 1990. He was involved in country clubs. In 1998, Václav Havel awarded him the Medal of Merit, 1st Class, for his successful lobbying for the Czech Republic‘s accelerated admission to NATO. In 2014 he returned permanently to Prague, where he lived in 2024.
