Czechoslovak Political Prisoners - über das Projekt Political ...

How were you released?
I was released on amnesty. Initially we were supposed to go home on May 9th, but because
one čůza needed help with ironing, I was released on May 10th. I got 375 Crowns ($20 today,
in 2008) as earnings for 12 years. I had a blouse and a skirt borrowed. Everything else I had was
stolen. They stole my book of English and clothes. In Pardubice they bought us train tickets and
we went home.
Did you have troubles finding a job?
I must tell you I was really lucky because our girls always helped me. After discharge I went
to the work office to hand in my papers and then I was flying around the town. I met one lady
friend who asked me what I was doing. At that time I really didn’t know what I should do.
She told me she was just on her way to the Žižkov storage area as they were hiring. We went
there together and we both were hired. I was pulling pallets there, in which there was loads
of chocolate, even though I was pregnant. After delivery I didn’t go back to it. After another
three years I was looking for a job, but I was so simple-minded that I always told everybody
I was in prison. Of course they never gave jobs to convicts then. Then another lady friend spoke
to me on a tram, asking, “What are you up to?” I answered I did nothing. “Would you like to
go to my work, I´m giving it up?” She was a storekeeper in a big factory, but only formally on
paper. There I got a questionnaire and there they asked me what I did in the past. That time
I wrote that I was sewed clothes for a firm in Hradec Králové that never existed. That was good,
but if I wrote down I was in a criminal, it would never work. Finally everybody knew anyways,
but that didn´t matter any more. I stayed up until the time when they built a new factory in
Stodůlky. I didn´t want to commute from Karlín to Stodůlky 17 , so I wandered around in the
streets again. I met a ladyfriend and she asked, “What are you up to?” “Nothing, looking for
a job.” She told me to go to her husband to be a matron and I did that until I went to retire.
My girls always helped me.
How did your old friends behave to you after you came back?
My two best friends, who also visited me once in prison, they stayed with me forever. With
the others I never tried to get in touch again. I didn’t have much to talk about with them and
no taste to meet them. I was like in another world. I was only able to speak to people who
were arrested like me. It didn’t matter whether it was a man or woman. Finally, I also married
a “mukl” 18 , he was in prison for 11 years. He had so many friends and so did I. At Easter and
Christmas I kept writing and sending so many postcards, it seemed impossible. While we were
at our cottage, we never had one free Saturday or Sunday alone as someone would always
come for a visit.
How did you perceive the year 1968 19 ?
I was with my son at the cottage and my mother-in-law came and told us the Russians came.
A week before that our relatives from Vienna came over, telling us the Russians would occupy our
country. I got really furious then and said, If they will occupy us, that means they will occupy you
17 Stodůlky – Prague periphery; nowdays part of a large urban district.
18 “Mukl” – someone who was in prison, the word “mukl” itself comes from the abbreviation of – “a man on death row”
(in Czech: muž určený k likvidaci). It was a label given to political prisoners imprisoned by communist or Nazi regimes that
were not supposed to be released and were supposed to die in prisons or concentration camps. Later on, this label started
to be used for all political prisoners.
19 Czechoslovakia was occupied by the armies of Warsaw pact on August 21, 1968. The country remained under Soviet
dominance until November 1989.
82