Otto J. Reich

  • "Fidel Castro was arrested in 1953 and defended himself in court with a speech called "History will prove me right." When my dad heard the speech on the radio or television ... Actually, he didn't tell me until later, I was seven or eight at the time of the trial. He told me that it still gave him creeps and that the speech was very reminiscent of the one spoken in German by Adolf Hitler. It's interesting because the sentence, "History proves me right," was the last of Fidel's defenses. He said to the judge at the time, "You can sentence me, but history will prove me right." And this is exactly the sentence that Adolf Hitler also used in his defense. He defended himself in court in the 1920s after the famous Munich Coup, which was also unsuccessful. Hitler defended himself at the time and used exactly these words."

  • "As we left the port from Havana, I realized that I was leaving my country - the only country I knew. A Russian ship was anchored in Havana Bay at the time, with a sickle and a hammer depicted on the chimney. I remember it upset me a lot. The fact that I had to leave my home country and at the same time the Russians were just arriving and they were going to stay in Havana..."

  • "It was very traumatic to see my father, who was always a very cheerful man with a great sense of humor, despite having to leave his native Austria and lose his parents who were murdered... and he himself was a very hardworking man. ... To see my father, who built a successful company after a lot of other hard work in Cuba and ensured a relatively comfortable life for his family ... And then suddenly the economy collapsed and the furniture company had to quit because Fidel Castro himself one day decided that it would no longer be possible to import from the United States: "We will no longer import from the United States, because it is an imperialistic state, and now we will import from the Soviet Union." But the Soviet Union did not produce formica. The Russians had no idea what formica was. The company went bankrupt within a week because there was no material from which they could produce. And all those two hundred employees, they were the fathers of the families, so they suddenly had no job."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Miami, USA, 12.04.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:59:24
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memoria de la Nación Cubana / Memory of the Cuban Nation
  • 2

    Miami, USA, 12.04.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:59:24
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memoria de la Nación Cubana / Memory of the Cuban Nation
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The only strength of communism is that it can hold on to power.

Otto J. Reich, Miami, 2019
Otto J. Reich, Miami, 2019
zdroj: Post Bellum

Otto Juan Reich was born in October 1945 in Havana. His father came from a Jewish family living in Austria, but he left the country after it was occupied by Nazi Germany. He gradually passed through several European states and eventually settled in Havana, where he met the mother of Otto Juan Reich. During the 1950s, he engaged in trade, and later, together with other immigrants, they founded a furniture factory. After Fidel Castro and the other revolutionaries triumphantly entered the capital, Otto‘s father soon realized how politics on the island would likely develop. For this reason, he did not hesitate and began preparing to move the whole family to the United States. Otto Juan Reich left Cuba with his family on a steamboat that sailed in July 1960. The family first settled in New York. However, they soon moved to North Carolina, where Otto‘s father got a job. Otto Reich then studied Latin American Studies at a local university. In the 1960s, when the United States was at war with Vietnam, Otto decided he would like to join the military to repay somehow what he owed to the country that gave him a home. He eventually ended up in a unit that operated in Central American Panama. After returning to the United States, he studied again, this time at Georgetown University. He participated in Ronald Reagan‘s presidential campaign and later held important positions in his administration. In 2001, when President George W. Bush took office, Otto Juan Reich was appointed Deputy Secretary of State for Western World Affairs. Until 2004, he worked for the US National Security Council. Since then, he has been working as a consultant for foreign trade in the private sector.