"On Monday after November 17, I did something I did only rarely in my life. I got up at the dawn and went to Prague. Sometime before six in the morning, I was on Národní třída. There was blood on the walls. There were two things that occurred to me: That something would be wrong if they hadn't cleaned it up by then. That stopped me. I said to myself that no matter what the development would be, I would never go to the polls again if the Communists remained in power. I made this commitment to myself on Národní třída when I saw the blood on the wall. From that Národní třída I went up to Václav, where the students were already. After that trip, I had a wonderful experience. The Prague was just waking up and an old lady was leaving the street. She had such a wire cart in front of her and she had a huge beautiful portrait of Masaryk on it. She went to St. Wenceslas with it. Symbolic perception. That was a wonderful feeling."
"It was taking it very seriously then. I was at the funeral of Jan Palach and it was perhaps even worse than those moments before. Because I had a feeling that something terrible was just happening, because there was silence in Prague. It is unnatural for me to be quiet in Prague. An oppressive silence."
Zdeňka Ostmeyerová, neé Janáková, was born on March 8, 1943 in the family of a wheelwright in Popelištná in the Pelhřimov region. Thanks to her excellent study achievements, she entered the Faculty of Arts of the Charles University, where she studied the approbation of history - Czech language and literature. From August 1965 she worked as a teacher for foreign students at the University of the November 17, firstly in Hamr na Jezeře, later in Zahrádky, and from September 1969 in Prague. She experienced the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops on holidays in Cyprus, in January 1969 she attended the funeral of Jan Palach. As a lifelong independent at the University of the November 17, she also survived the post-August checks. In 1973, the witness married her former student Jűrgen Ostmeyer from West Germany. The Czechoslovak secret service offered cooperation, but Jürgen Ostmeyer refused the role of StB agent. In 1984, the Ostmeyers adopted a daughter from an infant institution. After the Velvet Revolution, Zdeňka Ostmeyerová became the Deputy Director of the Institute of Language and Vocational Training, whom she was until her retirement in 2005. In 2020, she lives in Satalice.
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!
