MUDr. Anna Pánková

“It was a terrible blow for the whole family. For the first time, I could really feel what a totalitarian regime is really like; what it was like when they really could do anything to you. My mom went down the street, she was wearing gloves and a hat. It was cold and she was nicely dressed, because from the past she still had nice things and handbags. A lady walked in her direction, she tore down her hat and began trampling on it. She said: ‘You take off your gloves, comrade, too’. It was a lady who was the chairman of the so-called ‘street committee’ of the street we lived in.”

“But back to the time when I worked in the engine room. I was not only the only one woman there, but of course the only child. The work was very hard. You have machines there that produce the ice. They are located below the surface of the ice rink, amidst black corridors. I had to lubricate them and climb on a ladder and tighten any screws that got loose. Mongoloids, sick people suffering from Down syndrome were mostly doing this difficult, dirty and unpleasant work. Being a fourteen-year-old girl, I was terribly afraid of them. They were almost twice as big as me. As a child, I of course knew nothing about that disease and they made such frightening sounds when they wanted to tell me something. I was so terribly afraid of them for two years, I think it might have marked me for the rest of my life. There, in these dark corridors with the bad air, moved these giants who of course didn’t do much and I was supposed to tell them what to do. It was horrible.”

“On that night, they took away so many of my father’s friends, mainly lawyers, and no one knew where they had been taken. I was not even four years old by then. I was lying in the baby room, earlier it was a small room for the maid because no more than a bed would fit in there. I lay there, suddenly the door opened, my father came in and woke me and with him were two men in leather coats. I heard the cries of my mother. My dad told me: ’I have to go away now, I don’t know for how long, be good and listen to your mother, everything will be alright, just listen to mom. I said ‘where are you going, daddy?’ ‘I don’t know yet’. I stood in my bed and I wanted to hang my arms around his neck, but one of the men came, pushed away my arms and threw me back on the bed. That’s something I’ll never forget, how they tore me away from my warm and sweet-smelling dad. For a year and a half, we didn’t even know where they took him.”