"Grandpa lost everything. He had some tendencies to return to business after 1948, which of course was not possible, and I think he soon came into the crosshairs of the Communists and especially the StB. He allegedly wrote a critical letter to the founding dean of the faculty in Hradec, Professor Smetánek, who was perhaps already in exile at the time, in which he criticized the conditions and the current situation. The situation culminated to the point that they began to search our homes. They came at two or three o'clock in the morning. They were tapping the walls and looking for hidden property, hidden gold, they just started to persecute and interrogate my grandfather in an indiscriminate way, until it culminated, I can say today, in a political trial of my grandfather, where he was accused of alleged illegal business, and even my grandfather was put in prison. I know he came back a broken man, no longer believing in almost anything. But he carried on nonetheless. He was also the curator of monuments not only in Hradec Králové, but also in Rychnov nad Kněžnou, and it was he, who for example, who finally saved those amazing Škoda heads on the Grand Hotel in Hradec Králové."
"The collection, as the family was struggling financially, we had no other option, and unfortunately we had to sell the paintings from time to time. So for example, when my aunt Magda, the daughter of my grandfather Václav Rejchl, died, my grandfather was just so full of grief and everyone was so destitute, because the regime only gave them some 100-200 crowns of pension, so he decided to sell the painting by Bohumil Kubišta, 'The Smoker', which is so amazing. I still look at it with a sinking feeling in my heart. It was worth a tomb in the cemetery. Then my mother and I, when we were left alone with my grandmother, we were evicted from our apartment. So my mother was in such a bad financial situation that we sold my grandfather's portrait by Bohumil Kubišta again at that time. Perhaps the satisfaction is that it hangs in a gallery in Hradec Králové. So when I get homesick, I can come and see my grandfather."
"I don't know quite what the real cause of it was, but my parents, or rather my dad, had friends who were former classmates of theirs back in high school, and occasionally those families would visit - and so as it happens, there was an established saying, "Well, when do you think it's going to burst?" And they always had a great conversation. I think they felt good together. I can remember one day the doorbell rang in our flat, and the men in overalls came in and said that the telecoms had discovered that we had a very old telephone set, so they were coming to do a renewal, so the telephone set was replaced. All in all, nothing happened for quite a long time, until suddenly both my father and my mother started to be summoned to the State Security again for questioning, in such a way that maybe they were already waiting for them outside my mother's work. My mother was taken there without food or drink and forced to stay until maybe until ten o'clock in the evening. When she said 'good day', the person in question told her, 'If it was under another regime, you'd have been punched in the mouth, comrade, so sit down here.' I don't know what else. It even got to the point where they called my class teacher in for questioning, who of course didn't take it very well. So they asked her how I was showing myself at school, whether I was some kind of agent of anti-socialist force in the fourth or fifth grade."
Helena Judlová was born on 21 March 1954. Her grandfather was Václav Rejchl, a famous architect and constructor. Her grandmother came from a prominent Jewish family, the Rieners. A large part of her family perished in the concentration camps. Her father, as a child of a mixed marriage, had to go to a labor camp, where he survived the end of the war. The new communist power after 1948 greatly affected the future life of the whole extended family, who lost all their possessions. The communists began to persecute and interrogate her grandfather, culminating in a political trial where he was charged with alleged illegal business and imprisoned. In a historical paradox, her grandfather was imprisoned in a courthouse he had designed years earlier. The parents tried very hard to make sure their daughter had a nice childhood despite the adversity. Helena Judlová‘s father graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering and devoted himself to the design of civil engineering structures. For political reasons, he never had a chance to reach any managerial position, although he was an highly venerated expert in his field. Helena Judlová, however, had already known the StB persecution in her youth. Her mother was often interrogated and the family was monitored. In spite of the problems caused by her origins, she got into high school. In 1972, her father died. The family was moved from the house built by her grandfather to a prefabricated apartment in Labská kotlina II. After graduating from high school, she applied to study dentistry at Charles University in Hradec Kralove, where she was finally accepted after great vicissitudes. In the third year of her studies she met her older classmate Vít Říha, whom she later married. In the fourth year of her studies, her son Jan was born. She finished the faculty and finally graduated with a red diploma. For a long time she was unable to get a job, and she was regularly interrogated by the StB. Eventually she got a job in a dental clinic in the Slezské suburb of Hradec Králové. At this time she also divorced Vít Říha. She moved to Ústí nad Labem in the hope that it would finally end the StB interrogations. Unfortunately, she was not spared from StB interrogations even at her new workplace. After 1989, Helena Judlová returned to Hradec Králové again. In 1990 she married Jiří Judl for the second time and in 1991 she had a baby girl. In restitution, the family managed to acquire some original property. At the age of 60, Helena Judlová started her own business as a private doctor and was still working at the time of the interview in 2021.
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!
