Hana Landová

* 1934

  • “In the meantime, Soviet soldiers set up camp in Karlín next to our house and shattered our windows and hit our ceiling. We had to put in new panes and screens, and two holes remained in the ceiling. Whenever I was having the ceiling decorated, they always offered to fix the holes, but I would never let them. I said they would stay forever, to show everybody that Soviet soldiers had shot them.”

  • “I took my first skiing course in February 1948. Times were tough, so my trousers were remodelled from dad’s plus fours, my tarpaulin jacket was not waterproof, my cap was home-knit by my mum, and my skis and poles were borrowed from Francek Laurin because I was about as tall as him. When we came back, mum was waiting at the Wilson [Hlavní] Station. I was in the thick of my teen age, and I always liked telling a lot of political jokes. Suddenly, mum stopped me: ‘Hanička, you shouldn’t tell them anymore – it’s like the wartime.’ We were walking down Korunní towards Ruská Street, and there was a guy in civilian clothes cradling a rifle. That was my entry into the next era, which went on to March 1948 when mum and I stood in a long queue to bid our last farewell to Jan Masaryk.”

  • “We stopped in Innsbruck, Austria on our way back home from Spain. We slept in a tent in a camp, and went for a walk in the town the next day; it was Sunday. After the holy mass, people formed a procession and our entire family followed them. It made me cry. I realised how close I was to staying there. We had friends all over the world, but our home was in Prague – and so were both of our grandmas. I cried some, and then we drove home. What an incredible situation – the calm people, the easy Sunday morning, the church bells, a sweetshop, and fine clothes including pretty hats and gloves – just unreal.”

  • “The war was over on the eighth [of May], and we knew there had been serious atrocities in Pankrác. Our relatives lived in Pankrác – mum’s cousin Adolf Herda and two young children. Mum dressed me up in a national costume, which probably wasn’t too wise, and we walked down the hill from Vršovice to Nusle on 9 May. A patrol stopped us and said we couldn’t cross because there was a machine gun nest on the way down. We waited until it was safe to walk over, and then we reached the court building, in front of which Czechs were having their revenge on Germans. Mum covered my eyes to spare me of the sight, but I still saw some of it, and it was cruel.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 22.04.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:58:04
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 01.06.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:55:23
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

They first seized my father-in-law’s shop, and then an entire house in Karlín one year later. We lived in constant fear of eviction

Hana Landová’s high school graduation photo, 1953
Hana Landová’s high school graduation photo, 1953
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Hana Landová was born in Prague on 17 April 1934. Her father Prokop Stanislav was injured during World War I. Even though he recovered and lived in good health for the next 20 years, he eventually died of the consequences of his injury in 1939. Mother Marie Stanislavová then raised Hana and her brother with the help of her widowed mother. Hana Landová graduated from a higher social-educational school in Prague and once she completed her pedagogical education, she started working at a preschool facility. She married Vavřinec Landa who was 12 years her senior and came from a family of former First Republic entrepreneurs that lost all its property to the communist regime. The family lived in a corner house near Karlínské Square that the government had seized in permanent fear of eviction. Husband Vavřinec Landa was involved in the fighting for the radio building in May 1945 and went to study a university after the war, but was kicked out over his bourgeois origins after February 1948. He had to work as a forge worker in Ostrava. After he seriously injured his ankle, he worked from home as a worker for the Směr cooperative. Hana Landová raised two children. Later on, she worked as a tutor, an employee of a heritage preservation institution, and in the Výstavnictví state enterprise managed by the Ministry of Culture. Following the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Vavřinec Landa regained the apartment building in Karlín in restitution, and Hana Landová and her children take care of the house to this day. She was living in the house in Karlín in 2022.