Emigrant Letters in the Czech Republic There are not many public emigrant letter collections in the Czech Republic, certainly no large or well-researched collections from our region in rural South Bohemia. We also found that, at least in our region, the old people know about 19th century emigration to America. Most of their children and grandchildren, however, do not know about this. When talking with elder people from our rural region, we learned some of the reasons for this. The main reason is that under the communist regimes, it was better not to talk about any relatives in the West. Being in contact with them could, and in several cases did actually cause severe problems for the family. As result, a lot of material was destroyed or lost over the years, and many stories of emigrating relatives were no longer passed on to next generations. The Rozmberk Society is now trying to build up a collection of emigrant letters from our region. This collection will be linked to our databases on emgriation from this region and life stories of the emigrants in their new homeland. Displays in our museum, the traveling exhibition, the Emigrant Letter websuite, and the activities with our American partners will help keep the history of emgiration from our region alive and will help raise awareness for migrant problems, both yesterday's and today's. For us, the history of the emgirants is not pure statistics but part of our local rural heritage. We try to show this as it is kept in memories and shows from the emigrant letters and other memories. Our stories and explantions, therefor, can and will differ from those found in mainstream history books. Neither is per definition correct or wrong or better, it is just a different perspective. Beware: The web pages concerning the Czech contribution to the Emile activities are given in both Czech and English. These different language versions are aimed at different target groups. The Czech version is aimed at the Czech people while the English version is aimed mainly at the descendants of the Czech emigrants in America and at foreign persons interested in Czech emigration. For that reason, the general and introductory texts in English are not always identical translations of the Czech versions but can differ. However, the supporting documents, pictures, and translations of letters are the same for both versions.