Film explores woman's family roots in Slovakia

As a child growing up in Kenosha, Wis., during the Cold War, Susan Marcinkus fancied her grandmother a Communist spy.

The 6-year-old mistook for Russian the foreign language her grandmother, Judita Marcek Korbel, whispered at night and was puzzled by her secretiveness about her past.

This curiosity led Marcinkus, a Los Angeles filmmaker, on an odyssey to discover her family's roots in Slovakia, formerly part of Czechoslovakia in central Europe. That voyage culminates in Pittsburgh on Thursday with the East Coast premiere of her docudrama, "Pictures from the Old Country."

"Almost all Americans have roots in another land - whether it be a number of generations away or a first generation away," she says. "Most of us at some time or another become interested in who our ancestors were.

"When you know your family history," she adds, "then you can have an appreciation of what and where you came from, and it's very enriching."

Marcinkus' film will be shown as part of the eighth Genealogical/Cultural Conference sponsored by the Czechoslovak Genealogical Society International. The conference will focus on the Slovak, Czech and Rusyn heritage of western Pennsylvania.

Over the past 15 years, Marcinkus, 47, has worked as a director, producer and editor on film and TV projects in Hollywood, Calif. She edited an Oscar-winning short film, "Board and Care," and served as a producer on the TV show "Rescue 911." She also directed a dramatic short film, "Second Thought," which aired on A&E and PBS and won a CINE Golden Eagle Award.

It was during a film shoot in Vienna, Austria, during the early 1980s that Marcinkus first attempted to visit Slovakia. But she was limited to one afternoon in Bratislava, the Slovak capital, because of difficulty in crossing into a then-Communist country.

But even those short hours whetted her appetite.

"It was incredible to hear everyone in their daily lives speaking that language that my mother and my grandmother whispered," she says.

Marcinkus returned for two months as a Masaryk Fellow. She taught English to graduate students in international relations at Comenius University in Bratislava.

At that time, Czechoslovakia peacefully broke apart into two countries - the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

"I was searching for my Slovak identity at a time when the Slovaks were thinking of their own Slovak identity," she says. But she could not find her grandmother's village of Jahodniky Svaty Martin.

In 1999, Marcinkus returned, this time with a film crew and more determination.

Using land records, librarians and amateur genealogists, she found her grandmother's family. They welcomed her with open arms and shots of slivovitz, or plum brandy, the official drink of Slovakia.

Her grandmother's village was gone, annexed to the larger city of Martin. The family homestead was gone, leveled for development.

But Marcinkus visited the cemetery where her grandmother's sisters are buried. There, she lighted candles, lay wreaths and cried.

On Nov. 1, All Saints' Day, she attended services at the Lutheran church where her grandmother and her family were baptized. It is the same site where, in the mid-19th century, hundreds of Slovaks had gathered to proclaim their autonomy from their Hungarian rulers.

Marcinkus learned that her grandmother used her skill as a seamstress as a ticket to America. She arrived in America in 1913 at the age of 22. She worked as a seamstress, cook and housekeeper.

Marcinkus' Slovak family believes her grandmother was much better off in America. But Marcinkus says she thinks otherwise.

Her grandmother came to this country alone. She lost contact with her Slovak family after the country became communist. She struggled with English all her life. She raised four children. And she cared for her husband after he contracted diabetes and lost both of his legs.

"My mother had a better life than what she would have had in Slovakia," Marcinkus says. "I have a better life than what I would have had in Slovakia. But (my grandmother) paved the way, and her life, I am not convinced, was any better than it would have been in Slovakia. I learned that I had an enormous debt to pay to her."

Marcinkus says she hopes to bring her husband, Larry Jacobs, and her son, Jonas Marcinkus-Jacobs, to Slovakia as soon as possible. She would like someday to buy land there and build a wooden house.

Perhaps the next trip will change her 14-year-old son as it has changed her.

"I'm taken out of my little selfish world," she says. "I'm not only American. I am of the world."