Daniela Štěpánová

* 1934

  • "I did not have a choice. I finished elementary school in 1949 and that was a very bad time. My parents and acquaintances of my parents said that it would help me if I disappeared from there as far as I could. I was not even entitled to agricultural school. People would like me to work as a feeder or milking maid. My parents succeeded through acquaintances and I got to Prague. I wanted to go to any school. I got into social law. I was in my first year, and at the end of the school year, the headmistress told my mother to take me out of school, because the headmistress would be changed - and if the new headmistress would see what came from Hoštka, what files, I would not be able to stay at that school."

  • "When they took it from him, they nationalized it and turned it into a state farm, it was coincidentally a month before the Minister of Agriculture Smrkovský announced the best state farm in the Litoměřice region, and that was exactly my father's. Dad was fired from there in the 1950s, not because he was mismanaged, he farmed as if he were on his own, even though it was already a state farm. The lady, who was an ordinary worker, thought the farm worked on its own, and she destroyed the state farm so much that it had to be taken over by the collective farm. Otherwise, it would go bankrupt. Our people who lived there were forced to move out. They were not told where to go and where to look for something..."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha ED, 09.09.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 01:44:35
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha ED, 27.11.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 01:51:31
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

When my husband and I wanted to say something private, we went to the Kampa park

Daniela Štěpánová in 2020
Daniela Štěpánová in 2020
zdroj: Post Bellum

Daniela Štěpánová, née Lindová, was born on July 31, 1934 in Korycany in the Mělník region to the family of farmers Richard and Vlasta Lindová. She grew up with two younger sisters. In 1937, her parents rented a farm in Hoštka. After the Nazi occupation of the Sudetenland, Hoštka became a part of the Third Reich, the Czech school was abolished by the Germans and Daniela attended a German school. They could travel to the protectorate to visit their grandparents on a pass. Richard Linda employed only Czechs and Slovaks on the farm. In 1948, the Communists nationalized the farm, Richard Linda was employed as the director, but after two years he was unjustifiably dismissed and allowed to work only as a feeder for the masons. The family had to move out. Daniela completed her basic education in 1949 and, as the daughter of a „kulak“, was not entitled to further education. She went to Prague to try her luck, where she got into a social law school, but after a year she had to leave for political reasons. She got into the field of dental laboratory, which she graduated from and wanted to continue at university, but again this was not possible for political reasons. In 1955, she got married and started a family. They lived in Prague. She was at home with the children for the next 16 years. She and her husband planted an apricot orchard, to which they devoted every free time for another 40 years, and then had additional income from the sale of apricots. In August 1968, the sister of the witness Vladka emigrated. The Štěpáns also experienced house searches and the fear of wiretapping when they were to travel to Switzerland at the invitation of their brother-in-law. Since the beginning of the 1970s, Daniela Štěpánová worked in a construction company in the Safety and Health Protection Department, which was located on Národní třída, where the Velvet Revolution also took place. Daniela Štěpánová managed the apricot orchard for six years after her husband‘s death. Around 2000, she sold it and started traveling the world.