"At the end of the year, the bishop gave me a reward of ten thousand crowns, so I was very happy. Below [at the archbishopric] it was written: 'A trip to Israel for ten thousand crowns'. But I owed ten thousand to my dentist, who didn´t need it that quickly. So, I came home and I was thinking a lot about what I would do with the money. I still didn't know. So, I filled a bathtub with water, I stayed there for a while, I went out and it was clear to me. I took ten thousand crowns, I went to see my dentist, whom I found in confusion. It was the end of the year, she was putting together all the invoices and saying, 'Jana, I don't know what to do, I still owe here ten thousand crowns here. I have no idea what to do with it.' And I said, 'I know what to do with it.’ And I gave her the ten thousand crowns. It was very simple and I felt very good. Anyway, a few days later I sat in the office, someone knocked on the door and Václav came in, who was Bishop Padour's brother, and says: 'Bishop Padour had paid for a trip to Israel and knows he would not go because he does not feel good yet. He just wants to give it to you. 'So, I could go to Israel too."
"At that time, I happened to meet Vráťa Brabenec and we talked about it. And Vráťa Brabenec told me: “During the interrogation they ask about different people, so it is good to tell them that it is very rude to talk about people who are not there.” And I used during the interrogation. I told them straight away. They didn't answer anything at all, but I have to say that they didn't treat me badly at all. So, most of those interrogations were about talking about painting."
"So, I finished the school where he was working and got an old professor Kotalík, as an opponent. It was part of my studies. He was teaching us art history at the time. And I remember such a thing, and I have to brag about that a little bit. I had twelve paintings ready, and the last picture I painted was a little different in color. And I found something in that, so I was very interested in the painting. So, we had the paintings set up, and he said to me, 'So which picture do you like the most?' So, I pointed to the color picture. And he said, 'No!' He pointed to a completely different picture, and that was the figure of my then husband, Zbyněk, sitting in a chair smoking a pipe. And now Professor Kotalík has paid me an amazing compliment, because he said that he had not seen a more beautiful portrait since the 1940s."
Jana Jonáková, née Vachtová, was born on April 3, 1946 in Ostrava-Vítkovice. She had felt a desire for artistic expression since her childhood. From 1969 to 1975 she studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts with Professor Karel Souček. In Prague, a meeting in Dana Němcová‘s apartment in Ječná Street became absolutely crucial for her. Here she also met Pavel Zajíček, who made her a singer for the renewed line-up of the DG 307 group. As a result of police pressure from the communist power (the Asanace action), she emigrated in 1980 - after her husband Zbyněk Jonák signed Charter 77. She first lived in Vienna, later in the United States. In the USA, she gradually lived in New York, New Haven and Buffalo, where she got a job at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery. After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, she returned to Prague, working for the archbishopric. At present (2021) he creates artistically and musically.
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