Renata Horešovská

"At night, the bell rang and the tour and Dad was taken away. He was imprisoned and accused of something. Searching for documents, all night, about four men were rummaging there, running around the house. Looking for evidence that he helped his son leave the republic. He spent in solitary confinement in Pankrác for, we children were not allowed there, I think my mother once every two months. She sent him packages. I have his letters here and he says, for example, 'send me lemons in a package' or 'a few sugar cubes, I need to strengthen', 'send me the colors, maybe they'll let me draw something here'. Then I have requests for photos of children here. Of course, he wanted to know how we were doing and what we were doing, if we knew anything about our brother. It was so hopeless... Here I want to show you in a picture how Dad painted the cell, where he was imprisoned. They went for a walk in the yard once a day, but otherwise he had been there for eighteen months in this one room with a window by the ceiling, so he didn't even know if the sun was out or raining or what was going on outside. Even in his letters, he often asked how was the weather outside. And it was actually all for he was suspected of helping his son leave the republic."

"We suffered, firstly, because we were the family of a self-employed person, and secondly, because our brother emigrated. The second brother graduated two years after the older brother left. For each application, whether for work or school, a report was sent here from Černošice. The testimonials were formed in such a way that there were so-called tenths in every street or part of the village. It was an authorized member of the Communist Party, here in the street I know who he was. He watched over us - who was coming to visit us, where we were going, what we were wearing, what anyone brought us, if we participated in something somewhere and so on. They had detailed overview of us. For each application, when we then wanted to go to school, came an opinion from Černošice – and that was the end. It was a difficult situation and it is still today. It's all in people. There were good people again who, when Dad was locked up and we had three children here, still in schools, put food stamps in our mailbox or even gave us money. We also know who they were then; my mother told us later, when we were older. But on the other hand, Mom went shopping here, and our acquaintances crossed over to the other sidewalk so they wouldn't meet her because they either didn't want to meet her or because they were embarrassed to talk to her. Or they were afraid that someone would see them, that they were talking to my mother."

"My younger sister came out two years after me and had already brought paper home from a Mokropsy burgher school. She wanted to go to high school as she was artistically gifted after her father, that is why she wanted to attend art school. She brought a paper that she enrolled for medical school in Kolín. Dad went to school at the time, and the headmaster said that such a child must be saved from the family. That she has to go to the dorm to get out of the influence of her family. Parents did not agree and registered my sister to an uncle living in Prague, so the report was no longer from Černošice. About November, she got to Neruda's grammar school and graduated there. But after graduation there was the same problem. She passed exams at the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague with excellent results, talent exams, which are done in advance in the spring. And the evaluation report came from Černošice - and nothing. So she worked at the Technical Museum, helping to make some models just to keep working on herself. She went to exams a year later and the same thing happened again. The third year of exams again. During the third exams, the chairman of the commission, a well-known artist, told her, "Until you give up your parents, you will not be allowed to study." But Dad was no anti-state element. It's just that he was a self-employed person and that we had the brother who emigrated. And it was also about Černošice. It's in people. It's all in people. My sister then did other jobs, then got married, and in 1968, when things started to change here, she met a professor, and he said, 'Tamara, don't you want to go to school? Now we are opening a year and you could enter without exams.' She was thirty-one years old, she had no children, her brother-in-law agreed, so her dream came true. She graduated from the Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague and is an amazing academic painter and restorer, working for the National Gallery. And she's very happy. But what she experienced! She and my brother had the worst of it all."

"My oldest brother Radim was a graduate in 1948. It was his graduation year. He was obviously very advanced, he was an avid scout, and then he saw his father having his company confiscated. He attended along with the students in February right away, it was around February 25, the students went to support President Beneš in Prague at the Castle. And as they walked down Neruda Street and up there, turning toward the Castle, there was a barrage of militiamen. There were the workers and civilians who got weapons back in the 1948 and were a kind of an auxiliary police guard. And they didn't shoot those students there, but beat them with their butt. I remember my brother came and had a serious conversation with my father. I have the impression that about that time my brother decided not to stay here. He knew the way it was going here. He wanted to study, which he didn't stand a chance after graduation. The borders have closed. Even those who wanted to cross the border were shot at. Or maybe people were crossing the Danube in Bratislava and this kind of desperate things. Or they created helicopters and flew over the borders. And all this was forbidden. So my brother evaluated it all, graduated and emigrated in the summer."

“When [my husband] was in seventh grade, well, in the third year before graduation, the class went to see a Soviet film. He said there - my future husband, he told me and I have the documents here - he said to his friend next to him: 'Why should we watch such a piece of shit?' : 'The pupil Jan Horešovský behaved indecently in Soviet film and thus damaged the honour of our school and his own and is expelled from all schools in the republic.' My parents had to bear it and resolve the issue of a sixteen-year old boy; they found Tatrovka's workshops near Smíchov, so he worked there for a year. After a year, he received a confirmation that he was a workers' cadre, and the Ministry of Education graciously acknowledged that he could attend school, but elsewhere that it must not be in the grammar school in question. So he graduated in Smíchov. He wished to study medicine, he passed his first exams, the testimonials came and it was all over. So he spent a year in Motol as a butler, and a year later Professor Niederle recommended him again, based on the fact he worked in the labour field, and that he recommend his studies. So he graduated.”

“When we were in our second year, we went on a hop brigade. Hořesedly near Rakovník. During the day we were at the hop garden hand-combing hops. And in the evening we were accommodated above the stables. It was a yard, in the middle of a manure pit, we climbed a ladder, there was a barn at the bottom and above it was a barn. There was straw all over and we slept on that straw. Mice were chasing over us. Downstairs, horses slammed their hooves into wooden fences at night. Well, we came back from the hop job and nine of us suffered from infectious jaundice. So I lost two years of school and graduated in my sister's class. My liver was affected, I was in Karlovy Vary and spent time in hospitals in Krč. It was such a 'diversification', both for my parents and for me.”