“It cannot be said that there was nothing in the Jewish community in the Seventies or Eighties. Of course the state wanted religion to be separated from life, that is something which is impossible in Judaism, because Judaism is a religion of every minute of the day. I cannot say now I’m going to church and I’m a Jew, and now I’m eating and I’m a cosmopolitan. Everything is connected, one cannot be without the other. For instance, I did one thing that I considered normal, I started writing recipes to the Věstník [Gazette], that was the Jewish newspaper, what to cook on which feast day. It was awfully popular. There was nothing political about it, nothing Zionist, but it was very unwelcome. Because the mainstream apparatus had decided that the Jewish community was prone to extinction. My husband was actually told that by one lady comrade. [...]”
“Of course it wasn’t easy, there were problems, things that I didn’t find out until afterwards, say that our house was bugged. We saw a car with some men inside standing in front of our house in the morning. They didn’t do anything, but they were there. It makes you nervous, of course. And also I had the unpleasant experience that I found out, also afterwards, that someone had signed me as if I was a collaborator with State Security, which I certainly wasn’t and which I didn’t sign. I only found it out after I requested my file. I was summoned for interrogation already in the summer of 1977, after the Charter. It was unpleasant, but I knew I had nothing to say and that I didn’t want to say anything. [...] I requested my file, but the file was destroyed; perhaps it’s all for the better, who knows what I would have found out in it.”
“Then someone sent me some paper in which they accused my husband of not taking part in some congress under the influence of those closest to him, especially his wife, who is a Zionist. I always had a very strong bond with Israel. No one ever held it against me directly, rather, they tried to get information from me regarding the community. They knew all of this, it was more that they were verifying my approach to the matter. They didn’t need to ask me about this or that [particular] person, when they knew I had been speaking with him. Basically, they were pathetic. [Q: But they must have given some reason. In what way?] Submitting an explanation. They wanted me to cooperate, I said I can’t, as the rabbi’s wife. Which I guess was rather ludicrous.”
“I can say that I saw the only good option was to move to Israel. It didn’t seem possible to live in the atmosphere that was here. I’m a Zionist, so okay. Actually, I don’t regret that at all. We gave our children Jewish education there. [...] Of course, there is a big difference between the diaspora and Israel. We could have done a lot of work here, but for us personally it was the only solution and the most sensible one.”
“I knew I was a Jew, that’s clear, that was constantly discussed. But I didn’t know what it meant. Sometimes we would go to the synagogue for the big feasts. In Mariánské Lázně in the Sixties there was still a Jewish care home. [Q: And there was a functioning synagogue in Mariánské Lázně at the time?] Inside the Jewish care home there was a synagogue, there were services there every Friday. People went there, it was kind of social. I was the little girl. There were old people there who had lost their whole family. I was the pampered child. I understood that Judaism was something terrible that had caused them all to die. And that on the other hand it was great because all those Jews behaved very nicely to me. I had a kind of hazy approach to it, then I started finding books and reading them. I read in both Czech and German, the German helped me find lots of literature. I understood that being a Jew means to know and to uphold. [...]”
Hana Mayerová is not the typical emigrant. She left Czechoslovakia after 1989. From 1991 she lives with her husband Daniel Mayer, a former Prague rabbi, in Haifa, Israel. They moved to Israel after it became publicly known that Rabbi Mayer had cooperated with State Security. Hana Mayerová was born in 1957 in Prague. She spent her childhood in Mariánské Lázně, where she discovered her Judaism. She was raised by her step-grandmother, as a Czech-German bilingual. In the 1970s she moved to Prague, where she was acquainted with the future Prague rabbi Daniel Mayer. According to some lists, Hana Mayerová also cooperated with with State Security, but she herself adamantly refuses that; however, the files themselves were shredded and their content is not known. She visits the Czech Republic regularly, she takes an interest in Czech-Israeli relations and continues to aid the growth of the Czech Jewish community and its religious life.
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