Anna Jiříčková

"Childhood? I remember that, after 1948, my father remained a member of the People's Party. I remember when he returned after the coup, when Klement Gottwald took over the government and the People's Party was not a part of it. He came to Ostrava and was immediately fired and kicked out from his apartment. He couldn't even take his things from his office. And concerning the apartment, he was given notice with a six-month’s delay so that the family could find a new place to live. However, not long after a truck arrived in front of the house and a bunch of people arrived and started moving my parents out. My mother took us, Liduška and me, to my grandmother, and quickly started packing up anything she could, because the people who came took everything and left in a hurry. And they moved us to a ground-floor apartment on Kutuzovová Street, which was much smaller, there was no bathroom, just a toilet, and the apartment was extremely dark, because the houses surrounding it shaded it. So they moved us there and Oldřich was already born by then, he was tiny. So they moved a family with three children out of their flat because they needed to make space for some functionary."

"Mom wanted to go to work. And I remember how terribly difficult it was, because wherever she would go, she would be rejected because she was the wife of a political prisoner, whom she refused to divorce. A member of the State Security (StB) started to try to win my mother over, and was trying to convince her all of the spring of 1955. And he was persuading my mom to divorce my father. He kept convincing her that my father would be deprived of all civil rights - that is, he could not have any say in it and she could still live a wonderful life. And when my mom asked: 'What about the children?' 'We'll put them in an orphanage. They will not prevent you from living.'"

"So my grandmother took me there, it was at some point in the afternoon. They led me past all the prison cell doors to the examination room and as soon as you entered it... A huge room, there was a desk with a lamp and chair, and a typewriter on it. I was to sit on this other small chair. In the corner there was this board set in the wall at about the height of a seated position. Around that board the wall was smeared with all sorts of colours, especially brown. That’s where they simply beat those under investigation. And now imagine this: as they, there were two of them as always, started to interrogate me, you could hear screaming etc. from the room next door, as if they were beating someone. When I heard that, I stopped talking, I didn't want to say anything, not even my name, nothing."

"I remember once my mother said: 'Kids, say your prayers... I only have milk and bread left for us for tomorrow.' And I went to get the milk and bread in the morning before I went to school. And I noticed that there was an envelope in the mailbox, and the post didn’t usually come until around eleven in the morning. So I told my mom that we have something in the mailbox. So she gave me the key and: 'Go have a look.' I brought the envelope and there was a hundred crowns in it. We don't know from whom at all, nothing was written on the envelope. So we managed and life went on.'

"When he was first arrested, he was sent to Jáchymov and I remember that at that time he was allowed a visitor. So my mother went with my sister Lída and just imagine the huge distance between Ostrava and Jáchymov, you can look it up on a map! So they drove all day, I think, my uncle who accompanied them found a room for them to stay the night. And just imagine that at three o'clock in the morning they were kicked out of that room, including Lída, apparently the room was simply needed for someone else. So apparently they then sat at the station and waited for the first train to arrive to where the camps were. It was supposed to be a half-hour visit, but my mom said it turned out to be about ten minutes through some small window so they almost couldn't even see each other.''