Jana Peroutková

* 1939

  • "Except, for example, I remember the individual thing, that we were standing there against this big grandstand, and on this grandstand, at a distance of about four meters, there were students, and they had a huge poster over some of these students, and it said, 'Down with the communist scum,' or something like that. And like I said, it was terrible weather, and the wind was blowing that poster and those guys around, and I was like, 'This is it!' Words are not enough. It was just... The image of those boys was very high; it epitomised the moment for me."

  • "Except, for example, I remember the individual thing, that we were standing there against this big grandstand, and on this grandstand, at a distance of about four meters, there were students, and they had a huge poster over some of these students, and it said, 'Down with the communist scum,' or something like that. And like I said, it was terrible weather, and the wind was blowing that poster and those guys around, and I was like, 'This is it!' Words are not enough. It was just... The image of those boys was very high; it epitomised the moment for me."

  • "I was born on January 2, 1939, in a maternity hospital in Budějovice, and my brother was born four years after me when we were already living at my grandfather's country cottage. I remember nobody said anything to me; I just thought, 'How come they heat so much water? How come there are so many white sheets? How come they tear them like that? What's going on?' And my brother was born. It would have been hard enough to somehow take the mother to the maternity hospital thirty kilometres to Budejovice, so this is how it was handled. And it worked."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Plzeň, 29.09.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:33:55
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

When I was a child I could never imagine the world can exist without the war

Jana Peroutková in 1956
Jana Peroutková in 1956
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Jana Peroutková was born on January 2, 1939 in České Budějovice. Her parents came from southern Bohemia, from a landowning background. Her father, Jan Jindra, decided to become a teacher, accompanied by his wife Marie, née Malechová. Her early childhood was spent on a farm in Sedlíkovice near Veselí nad Lužnicí with her mother‘s family. In 1943, the Jindra family moved to Dolní Bukovsko, where they lived in a school building. It was used as a hostel for German refugees, and after the liberation, the Red Army settled there. In the autumn of 1945, they moved to Veselí nad Lužnicí. After 1948, forced collectivisation came upon the relatives, and both parents went to help out on their relatives‘ farms to help them meet the required supplies. After finishing medical school in České Budějovice, Jana married Bohuslav Peroutka, and together they moved to Pilsen, where they have lived since 1960. They attended services regularly; in 1985, they participated in the Velehrad pilgrimage and on November 25 1989, they attended the solemn mass associated with the canonisation of St. Agnes of Czechia. Subsequently, they went to a demonstration on Letná Plain. At the time of the filming in 2021, Jana Peroutková lived in Plzeň in Roudná in a cottage she and her husband had built with their own hands.