"I went home feeling like I wasn't even release and free. I thought I was going somewhere to visit, from which I would have to return soon. I had such feelings. I went a long way, stopped and said I wouldn't go any further. My mom and dad begged me and persuaded me, 'Please come home!' For a long time I had dreams in which I returned there and every night I could not understand again and again that I was free. I was so detached from society that I couldn't even go shopping on my own. My mother had to lead me everywhere from the beginning, because I was not able to function independently among other people. "
"I had a sore throat then and I was at the doctor with it. Then I went home and met someone in the square who told me they had been arresting at night. He also told me whom they were arresting, and I knew at that moment that they would come for me. I knew it from ten in the morning to four in the afternoon. I came home, lay on the ottoman, turned to the wall, didn't talk to anyone, even though there were a lot of people at home that day. Suddenly, it was four o'clock. My father stood by the stove, warming himself and watching a gendarme walking under the windows: 'Look, he's coming for us. What does he want? ' The moment he said that, I knew what time it was. He went inside, asked me for my identity and took me away. So, I went for a preliminary interrogation, but not far away, because a black limousine with policemen in civilian clothes was already around the corner."
"There was also a gentleman named Dohnal who walked on crutches. Whenever he came to us, he asked where other people lived. He took a villa himself, which was not enough for him. He just didn't find what he wanted. Before that, a poor family with more children lived in it, and he decided that he had to take the property from the neighborhood inside. So, we went to visit another villa behind the factory together. I joined him because I knew a girl who had a leather ball lived there. So, I went to get it. We arrived there and everything was locked. We got inside through the toilet window. He, with his crutches, and I, a twelve-year-old girl. He climbed in first, and when I couldn't get up, he gave me hand to help me. All the doors downstairs were also locked, so we went upstairs. To this day, I hear his crutches clatter on the wooden steps. Then, when we opened one of the doors, he said to me, 'Stand here by the light switch, I'll pull down the blinds and you'll turn the light on.' After a while, he saw the beauty and completely forgot about me. Greed awoke in him. He saw that he was there and the man could finally loot it all. In the meantime, I was walking around looking for my ball. He opened the closet, pulled out the sheet, spread it out, and then it all started. He rummaged from top to bottom, pulling everything out of the drawers and throwing it straight into the sheet from which he had made a backpack. But what now? Crutches and a backpack do not go together. I couldn't help him because I was little. Eventually he put it on his back, took on crutches, and we turned the lights off and went down."
"The expulsion was cruel. Just because they were old and helpless people who were only allowed to take thirty kilos with them. Imagine that armed individuals rush into your house: 'And out! And out in half an hour! ' The people in confusion did not know what to take first. It is a kilometer from Nová Bystřice to the Austrian border. We saw the customs house roof from our factory. They had to walk all the way. They rushed them to Austria. The things they carried suddenly became too heavy for them. That's why they threw them away and the ditches were full of it."
Jiřina Pešková was born on September 27, 1933 in Prague to a Czech-German family. Four years later, due to growing ethnic differences and her father‘s work, the Pešeks moved to Nová Bystřice on the South Bohemian borderland, where the predominantly German-speaking population lived at the time. The post-war deportation concerned only some of her relatives, some mixed families could stay in the city. The loss of her family and the nationalization of her father‘s business affected Jiřina so much that at the age of sixteen she became involved in an anti-communist resistance group organized by her classmates. In the winter of 1950, the entire organization was exposed, its members arrested, interrogated and tried in a fabricated trial. The main persons were falsely accused of further offenses, which led to their sentencing to eighteen years in prison. Jiřina was sentenced to two years, which she spent in Jindřichův Hradec, Strakonice and especially in the women‘s prison Lnáře. After her release, she struggled all her life with the consequences of a poor personnel profile and thus had to work, for example, as a crane operator in the Škoda factory in Pilsen. In 1968, together with other members of the group, she applied for state rehabilitation, which she did not get until after the Velvet Revolution.
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!
