"In seventy-nine there was such a conflict situation. The boys didn't want to go to the barrack, we called it a barrack, so the sisters chased them and nurse Daňková chased them inside with a hose. The boys got angry and barricaded themselves in one room. And they were barricaded in there all night. I was scared, so I didn't go in there with them, I was just scared, I just watched them do it. Then they managed to barricade the whole floor. But of course, in the morning within an hour the senior doctor, the doctor, the junior doctor, and the station nurse, who we called the head nurse, came. And then of course they unblocked it, that was no problem. Some of the boys were released from punishment, some were transferred to the big room, like I was. But that was an isolated incident."
"The other day, I was walking in the bathroom, and I fell and cracked my head open. I was bleeding. I knew that nurse Daňková was serving, and some other with her, and I felt at the time that I would rather bleed to death than be treated by her. But I went to the nurses' station, and they beat me up badly, and then they treated me. And then they gave me some more punishment. So that was probably the worst situation I experienced there."
"We only went home for Christmas, Easter and the summer holidays, and Christmas meant we were let out on the 23rd and had to go back on the 27th. That was the whole of Christmas. And they justified it by saying that they had to meet the schedule of a huge building, and if there was a vacant bed, they wouldn't get paid. They had a bedding unit, and they had to fill that somehow. It was some kind of payment, not from the insurance company, because there were no insurance companies then, but somehow that's the way it was. And the visits were once every two months, and there were rarely any exceptions. So, I was lucky that they allowed me, they allowed my parents, on my thirteenth birthday, right after those ten days my dad came there, brought me presents, some toys, and when he left, I cried all over the hallway."
Miroslav Kudláček was born on 13 September 1967 in Chrudim with child cerebral palsy (today referred to as cerebral palsy). Doctors discovered the disease only after his first birthday. He attended primary school in a hospital in Košumberk in the 1970s and 1980s. There he faced appalling psychological and physical terror from the staff. In addition, his mother suffered from paranoid psychosis. Upon his return, the witness remained at home for the next nine years. He educated himself, read and listened to the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe. He followed the Velvet Revolution avidly, at least through the media. In the early 1990s, he entered high school and successfully graduated. He then studied sociology at Charles University. Despite his handicap, he managed to obtain a doctorate. In 2022 he lived in his house in Chrudim.
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!
