We emigrated using fake French passports

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Jaroslava Dušátková was born on 26 January 1941 in Nový Bydžov where she also grew up. The family lost its business after the communist coup in 1948. From an early age, she wanted to be a teacher; she sang in a choir and played basketball. Because of her origins, she was not admitted to a teaching school at first, but she eventually completed it. She married Milan Dušátek in 1966. The idea of leaving the country came from her husband who had gone to the West on business a few times during the 1970s and had since wanted to move there with his family. She did not want to leave for a long time but eventually changed her mind. The last straw was when she wanted to improve her education with a doctoral degree but the headmistress of her school did not approve her application because of her bourgeois background. They tried to emigrate more than once. In 1984, with her husband and two daughters, they left for Yugoslavia, crossed the border into Italy with the help of a French acquaintance, and continued on to Germany. They arrived in the USA in March 1985. In the US, she worked her way up and back to teaching. She taught Czech at Stanford University in California until 2023. In 2020, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs awarded her with the Gratias Agit for promoting the Czech Republic abroad. In 2024, she lived in Walnut Creek, near San Francisco.