She built a barricade in the struggle for liberation, then totalitarianism ruined her relationship
Stáhnout obrázek
Zdeňka Halounová, née Čecháková, was born on 28 March 1929 in Prague, Žižkov. Her father, Ladislav Čechák, worked as a waiter in the Slavia café, where he was later chosen by director Martin Frič for a small role in Císařův pekař. During the war her father was totally deployed in the ČKD plants in Vysočany, and in March 1945 he luckily escaped the Allied bombing of the plants. The witness and her family built barricades during the Prague Uprising in Žižkov. After the war, she participated in agricultural summer jobs in the Sudetenland on the farms of the expelled Germans. In 1947, she became close to the Italian student Gabriele Morello, but their relationship was prevented by the rise of the Communists to power; later they re-established and maintained contact. She went to live in Jablonec nad Nisou, where she worked in the glassworks. There she met her husband Antonín Haloun, who was a convinced communist, but after the invasion in August 1968 he left the party and his sons were unable to study at secondary school because of this. The elder son suffered from dermatomyositis, and for treatment they had to smuggle medicines and studies from the West, and they also sought out the healer Jan Mikolášek. At the time of filming in 2023, they lived in Jablonec nad Nisou. The story of the witness could be recorded thanks to the support of a grant from the Statutory City of Jablonec nad Nisou in 2023.
