Zdenka Žmudová

* 1947

  • "My father found it very hard to bear that the machines he had bought, for which he had saved much in order to ease his work as a private farmer, to make it easier for him to work with the aid of technology, were taken away from him. So, he had to join the unified agricultural cooperative, because the situation was exactly the same as it had been during the Second World War. Those regimes made high demands on those who refused to cooperate with them. So my father found himself, for example, he did not want to join the unified agricultural cooperative at first and resisted, so he had to give such high rations, I do not know, for example milk and meat, that he just could not manage. That was impossible. That the rations requested were so excessively high, it simply could not be fulfilled. So then he succumbed, he joined the unified agricultural cooperation, didn't he, he had to join in."

  • "And then I started studying at university and the 1960s came, the liberation. And so I had the opportunity to go to Munich, Freiburg, West Germany. The school, the university, supported us in this. That is where I experienced the August in 1968. I did not experience the Soviet occupation here at home, but we were in that Germany at the time and I know that we were shocked by that at the time, because we did not know at all, of course we heard from the radio and television at that time, what terrible things were happening here. In addition, we were quite sad about it, and we even considered whether we should return here, whether we should not stay back there. Because we did not want to return to such a country where there are Soviet occupiers, well, but. And at that time we also received a lot of support from the university students there. I know that we took part in some kind of peaceful demonstration against the fact that we spoke out against the occupation here. And we thought about it much. But because we they were in our last year of university, just before the state examinations, and we simply wanted to finish our studies, so we ended up coming back here to the Czech Republic very late, sometime in November, at the end of the year."

  • "The 1970s were not easy for me at all, on the one hand, for two reasons. Back in 1960s, and I have to mention them, because then my answer will be easier to understand. I lived through the extremely beautiful 1960s as a university student. On the one hand, I studied first at high school, then at university. It was great; there was a liberated atmosphere and freedom of speech. As a university student, I often attended various student meetings, especially students from the Faculty of Philosophy invited us and we debated and discussed matters, and it was a beautiful period. At that time I also succeeded, I studied German, so I also had the opportunity to travel to Germany, to West Germany in 1967. Then I travelled again in 1968. And that's why when the 70s came, I took them very hard."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Poděbrady, 12.05.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:08:12
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Do not ask for concessions

Zdenka Žmudová at the age of 14-15
Zdenka Žmudová at the age of 14-15
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Zdenka Žmudová was born on December 20, 1947 into a peasant family. Her parents were significantly affected by collectivization, when they first had to hand over the machines they had been saving for a long time, and finally join the unified agricultural cooperative (JZD). Thanks to this, Zdenka was able to graduate from university, namely the Czech and German languages. She spent her university years during the Prague Spring, which she remembers very fondly. In 1967 and 1968, she managed to travel to West Germany for a study stay. She was also there in August 1968 and for a long time considered returning to Czechoslovakia at all. She finally returned in late 1968, finished school, and has been teaching continuously ever since.