"After five years she was allowed to come with the two boys, but Jarda wasn't. And that was more of a reverse shock, I also remember it like today, when they came to us. The three boys were standing at the door, her two and mine. And you could already tell by the way they stood who had gone through the democratic or tolerant school and the communist one. The attitude of those boys, who were the same age, who had been brought up the same way for ten years. You looked at them and I cried because I felt so sorry for them. I said, those boys were together from a very young age. And those few years of Swedish school were so obvious that you could tell the difference by the way they stood. They were confident. It was kind of ugly."
"My husband and I were living in Trojská Street in Prague 8 at the time. And he was very sick. I was at home with him, of course. My husband was teaching in the dance classes at the time, so he wasn't home in the evenings. And there were some elections. I don't remember exactly which ones, I'll admit. I just didn't care. And they came to our apartment. I'd been living there for maybe a year, not even a year. And I was told to vote. I said I wouldn't. That I didn't know anybody there, that I'd only lived there a short time, and I just wasn't gonna vote. And they explained to me, comrade, that I was supposed to go to the pre-election meetings. I tried to explain to them, to the comrades, that I was sorry, but that I really couldn't go to the meetings with the baby and that my husband was away and that I simply wouldn't vote because I didn't know anyone there. We argued there for a while and they left without me voting, which turned out to be quite a crucial issue."
"But there was also the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. And that was my first shock with the situation, the situation of the Holocaust. There was nothing left of the camp. There were these huge heaps. There were always these signs. So and so many thousands from Poland, so and so many thousands from France. Just horrible. And there was this big wall at the end. I don't know if it's still there, I haven't been there since. And there were verses in the languages of all those nations that had their dead there. And my friend's father wanted me to translate the Slavic languages for him, there was Polish, Ukrainian, from Czech there were verses of Hrubín. That was one of the reasons I kept coming back."
Jiřina Chrastilová was born on 17 July 1949. Her father Karel Vysypal was a civil servant and her mother a secretary. Her father was involved in Action 77 and later worked at the Ministry of Construction. Jiřina Chrastilová graduated from the Secondary School of General Education in Prague and got into university on her second attempt. She studied archives. During the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, she helped out in the hospital, and after the occupation she took part in the university strikes. She took part in the funeral of Jan Palach and the protests on the first anniversary of the occupation on 21 August 1969. In 1975 she graduated from university and later joined the Prague Information Service as a tour guide. As part of her profession, she also worked with handicapped children, whom she guided around Prague. She was associated with dissent, but was not a signatory of Charter 77. She took part in the parade on 17 November 1989, and during the revolutionary days she helped out at the Melantrich publishing house. After the revolution, she began to write scholarly articles and brochures about Prague, and she also focused on Jewish issues. In 2024 she lived in Prague.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
