Author Charles Ota Heller's early childhood in Czechoslovakia was idyllic, but his safe and happy world didn't last long, Three years after his birth, Germany forced an occupation of his country; afterward, most of his young life consisted of running and hiding. His life, just like those of the other youths who lived in Europe during the late 1930s and early 1940s, was shaped forever by the dangers, horrors, and unsettling events he experienced. In this memoir, Heller, born Ota Karel Heller, narrates his family's story-a family nearly destroyed by the Nazis. Son of a mixed marriage, he was raised a Catholic and was unaware of his Jewish roots, even after his father escaped to join the British army and fifteen members of his family disappeared. Prague: My Long Journey Home tells of his Christian mother being sent to a slave labor camp and of his hiding on a farm to avoid deportation to a death camp. With the war coming to a close, Heller tells of how he picked up a revolver and shot a Nazi when he was just nine years old. Heller, now an assimilated American, left the horrors of the past-along with his birth name-behind to live the proverbial American Dream. In his memoir, he recalls how two cataclysmic events following Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution brought him face-to-face with demons of his former life. On his personal journey Heller discovered and embraced his heritage-one which he had abandoned decades earlier.

Prague: My Long Journey Home: A Memoir of Survival, Denial, and Redemption

Biographies & Memoirs

Heller, Charles Ota

Memoirs

AbbottPress

Author Charles Ota Heller's early childhood in Czechoslovakia was idyllic, but his safe and happy world didn't last long, Three years after his birth, Germany forced an occupation of his country; afterward, most of his young life consisted of running and hiding. His life, just like those of the other youths who lived in Europe during the late 1930s and early 1940s, was shaped forever by the dangers, horrors, and unsettling events he experienced. In this memoir, Heller, born Ota Karel Heller, narrates his family's story-a family nearly destroyed by the Nazis. Son of a mixed marriage, he was raised a Catholic and was unaware of his Jewish roots, even after his father escaped to join the British army and fifteen members of his family disappeared.  Prague: My Long Journey Home tells of his Christian mother being sent to a slave labor camp and of his hiding on a farm to avoid deportation to a death camp. With the war coming to a close, Heller tells of how he picked up a revolver and shot a Nazi when he was just nine years old.  Heller, now an assimilated American, left the horrors of the past-along with his birth name-behind to live the proverbial American Dream. In his memoir, he recalls how two cataclysmic events following Czechoslovakia's Velvet Revolution brought him face-to-face with demons of his former life. On his personal journey Heller discovered and embraced his heritage-one which he had abandoned decades earlier.

Prague: My Long Journey Home a Memoir of Survival, Denial, and Redemption

Abbott Press

How did Clint Eastwood spend his Thursday evenings? What caused one of America's greatest basketball coaches to scream the "n-word" at the author? How did Heller become an early witness to the Clinton-Lewinsky affair? Why did jazz singer Helen O'Connell proposition the young, innocent Charlie Heller? What led the author to insult the leader of America's space program? How did Heller and a TV star/sex therapist develop immediate rapport? How did the author and the leader of a famous rock band become friends? These are some of the interesting vignettes told by Charles Ota Heller, a former CEO entrepreneur, educator, venture capitalist, athlete, and engineer who came to America as an immigrant from Czechoslovakia at the age of thirteen and who now looks back at a life of chasing the proverbial American Dream, chronicling the famous and near-famous people he met along the way.

Name-Droppings: Close Encounters with the Famous and Near-Famous

Charles Ota Heller has been an entrepreneur and mentor to entrepreneurs for over 40 years. Heller is a Holocaust survivor who arrived in the US as a penniless 13-year-old, speaking only two words of English. With strength, persistence, and determination, he went on to earn an athletic scholarship to college and obtain three degrees in engineering. He became an academic at the cutting edge of new computer technology and was bitten by the entrepreneurial bug. Over the next 20 years as CEO of technology companies and an additional 20 year as an investor, Charlie experienced the joys, successes, failures, and terrors of entrepreneurship. When the FBI attempted to shut down his company on a trumped-up charge, memories of World War II and the Gestapo filled him with the terror of uncertainty. Ready, Fire, Aim is the story of his riveting journey, told as a powerful, candid, engrossing adventure that only entertains but also provides valuable takeaways for present and budding entrepreneurs.

Ready, Fire, Aim: An Immigrant's Tales of Entrepreneurial Terror

Community & Culture

Boutique of Quality Books

"Charles Ota Heller's newest memoir, Cowboy from Prague, is a gripping and hauntingly beautiful exploration... required reading for a generation that often forgets that the struggle is the most important part of the journey." --Major General (Res.) Doron Almog, Israel Prize Laureate\nFrom the author of the acclaimed memoir, Prague: My Long Journey Home, comes an inspiring account of a refugee who boarded a ship toward hope-toward the United States-where he began a pursuit of the American Dream.\nAfter losing 25 members of their family in the Holocaust, the author and his parents escape a brutal Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, transforming themselves in a single day from one of their native country's wealthiest families to stateless refugees with all their assets contained in three suitcases. Young Charlie's father orders him to speak English without an accent and to become a "100% American." His obedient son complies and, despite struggles with anti-immigrant prejudice and the discovery that America is not the perfect nation he had imagined, Charlie succeeds beyond even his own dreams.\nHis struggles and triumphs-as a student, athlete, engineer, academic, entrepreneur, investor, author, and family man-serve as a reminder that America is still the land of opportunity, one that beckons to those looking for a better life. Cowboy from Prague is a tender, enthralling, compelling, and powerful story that will resonate with all Americans who, together, make up a nation unique in the world--a nation of immigrants.

Cowboy from Prague

History

World

Atmosphere Press