"I was quite active in the Civic Forum and managed various large meetings in the city of Brno. I remember one huge one in the builders' house on Dominikánské square, where there were over 300 teachers, and that was quite challenging, because then they started showing up a little bit... maybe some were really... those who were communists, they weren't even there anymore. But there were those who had never been communists, but then there was a group of people who had been communists once upon a time. In 1968, they did not sign that they agreed with the entry of the Warsaw Pact troops into the republic or opposed it in any way, they were dismissed from that position and worked on other labor professions. Just as those who were never communists did, so they also did these blue-collar professions. Or they had a problem - a problem from the 1950s, like my dad's, that was something else. And that's where a wave just started - here, the 68ers against the non-communists. I know that it was so terribly stormy there and I know that, for example, the huge session of over 300 people here, that it took a lot of work for me. Because me too in 1989, how old was I? I just felt like I was still young and didn't have that kind of experience. And it was sometimes quite challenging. But then again, it was a huge life experience to go through this era at all."
“Here they shouted at us quite strongly and were quite unpleasant that we have no right to call for something, that it absolutely does not exist. We did it anyway, of course it was very stormy. Because there it became clear who is on which side and how who feels. There, one of the demands was that the leading role of the Communist Party be abolished. I think it was. And that was the main point where it all started to fall apart. All the other ones – like free elections and stuff, that would sort of pass. I don't remember exactly what the demands were, but I know that this and that point was really hot and they absolutely did not want the leadership role to be abolished and so on. We finally kind of pushed it through, then there was some big meeting in the cafeteria or I don't know where, and now different people signed it saying they agreed with it and some didn't sign it saying they didn't agree with it. And there was such a thick, tense atmosphere.“
"Because our mother was still in that school, she knew some influential people at that regional national committee, where everything was decided. So she kept going there and complaining so that they would take me somewhere. Well, in the end, they actually promised her that they would take me there, to the farm, but no one wanted to sign it - the paper that I was accepted there. So, it was September, and I had to go to the Královopolská strojirna, where I had been orally promised that they would take me there... The director was an excellent person, he completely agreed with it, but someone from the national committee had to sign it, and that someone still didn't want to sign it. And I was at the Královopolská strojírna... that September I had to take 14 days of vacation, and as part of my vacation I went to that school in Bohunice, and I hoped that during those 14 days it would be successful, that someone would sign it and I would be able to start a normal course of study there. Which eventually happened. Our mother somehow stamped it out there, someone signed it there, and I was able to end my employment there in Královopolská, and go to the agricultural school, which was good."
Ivana Jelínková was born on October 12, 1960 into the family of a professional soldier, who in the 1950s actively opposed the introduction of the so-called politruk function (a political commissar who oversaw the commander and the unit, was in charge of maintaining a high level of appropriate ideological awareness among the soldiers. In Czechoslovakia, this function was called a representative for political affairs). The father was expelled from the army and demoted from the higher batch to a private, and was only allowed employment in construction, agriculture or mining. For this reason, the family not only had limited economic resources, but Ivana Jelínková and her brother who was five years younger also had difficult opportunities for education. After graduating from primary school, she was not admitted to secondary school and entered the Královopolská Strojírenská to major in technical drafting. She was here for a year. She then graduated from an agricultural and technical high school with a high school diploma, majoring in horticulture. After graduation, she was not accepted to university, so she worked as a cultural officer in the recovery rooms of the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement (ROH). She also briefly worked as a group leader at an elementary school. She was then admitted to the Faculty of Education, majoring in teaching for the first four grades (at primary school). In November 1989, she was employed as a teacher at the elementary school Masarykova. She was actively involved in the activities of the Civic Forum; at school as a speaker, then in Brno she organized various public debates, participated in demonstrations, etc. In 2022 she lived in Brno.
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!
