"Or, from what I remember, there were these various samizdat books. Or when somebody brought it in, we'd transcribe something, too. And with those carbon copies, or whatever it was, yeah, we’d pass things around like that and read different stuff. Kundera, for instance. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. We had that at home, and I read it back then."
"And right away in 49, it was supposedly the night a black car with State Security came and made a big stir in the family and took my grandfather away. That was a big turning point then. That must have been a very big shock for the whole family, because they didn't even know why they took my grandfather away or what the reason was."
"Then, as they lived on the Rašín Embankment, the bombs basically fell next door at the end of the war. That's where the Emmaus monastery fell and the house next to it. And that's what my father remembered, how they ran with mother and the little ones to the shelter and that it was not a pleasant thing. They had the windows smashed in and everything. And then there was another one after the war that my father remembered, the Prague Uprising, that they were building barricades, and then when the tanks came, the Soviet tanks at that time, the kids on the waterfront waving at them. I also have a picture of the kids on the waterfront waving to the liberators."
Oldřiška Podracká was born on 5 August 1964 in Brno, the younger of two sisters, into a family where her paternal grandfather, Jan Podracký Sr., was unjustly sentenced to twenty-four years‘ imprisonment in a mock trial in 1950. He was tried with the group of Andelin Šulík. Jan Podracký Sr. was eventually released after ten years of serving his sentence. During the interrogations, Jan Podracký Sr. experienced physical and psychological violence, which he describes in his application for permission to reopen the proceedings to the Regional Court in Brno in March 1968. However, Oldřiška Podracký grew up in slightly different circumstances than those experienced by her grandparents. The normalisation of the 1970s did not affect the family, which was not politically involved in any way. Thanks to their acquaintances, Oldřiška Podracká and her elder sister got into grammar school and later into universities. Oldřiška Podracká actively participated in the events of the Velvet Revolution, especially in České Budějovice, where she worked at the time. The change of circumstances after 1990 brought the rehabilitation of her grandfather, which Jan Podracký Sr. unfortunately did not live to see. Oldřiška Podracka worked almost all her life in one organization and in 2023 she lived in Brno.
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!
