Eva Bělková

* 1936

  • "When a pupil applied for high school, the Communist organization had to give him a report. And a colleague, his name was Peška, from Chválkovice, said that it was a religious family. So no high school. And I spoke up and I said that on the contrary, if it's a religious family, that he should get a proper education, that on the contrary he should go to that high school. So we were there for a while with this Peshka, until one of my colleagues said this reasonable sentence: 'Let's not spoil the boy's life.' Then the then chairman of the school's Communist Party organization had a quarrel with a teacher who was also in the Communist Party. They had a quarrel and he resigned, so they elected me as chairman of the school organization. And as such, after the invasion, I was invited to Slavkov, where there was a meeting of communists from the district, and this was to be discussed there. And I said into the microphone that this was not fraternal aid, that it was an occupation. First of all, I was kicked out of school for that, and secondly, our kids didn't get into high school, not one. When I asked the principal if I should sign them up for high school, she said, 'No, because I wouldn't be able to recommend them and they would be disappointed unnecessarily."

  • "My [husband] Anton and I knew we are not going to be successful, but we said, 'We're not going to give our skin for free.' The plaintiff, Eva Belkova, the defendant Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, said that they had fired me from my job without any reason. So we took it to court. My father said, 'Don't sue, you won't win and you'll lose your nerves.' And I said, 'We know we won't sue, but we won't lose our nerves.' So we were suing, and the judge asked - there was a representative of the education department of the ONV - so the judge asked the representative, if I couldn't teach with my opinions, if I couldn't be employed somewhere, for example, in a museum or in a library. And he said no. So I worked 19 years on the track."

  • "When the unified agricultural cooperatives were founded, the communists tried to force the peasants to join the cooperative. The peasants fought back, defending themselves by saying that they had worked for the land they had and now they had to give it to the cooperative for free. So they laid such traps. In short, they called my father to the district committee of the Communist Party and there they dictated to him the names of the peasants from Bedihost with their sentences. And he, when that happened, was broken by that. But since there was party discipline, it was impossible to leave the Communist Party. He had to ask for a resignation and give proper reasons. He justified it on the grounds that the Party dues were too high for him, that he was supporting a family of five, and that what he spent on dues in a year he could buy a pair of trousers for the boy. So the district committee of the Communist Party accepted this and dismissed him from membership, but also dismissed him from his judgeship. So then he was out of a job for a while. Someone recommended him for a manual worker's job in Ivanovice, so he went there to ask the company, and the company said yes, come back in about a fortnight and bring your cadre materials with you. And when he came in a fortnight, they told him they didn't need him anymore. So he was unemployed for a while. My auntie, my mother's sister-in-law, was a member of the Communist Party, and she sort of stepped in and said, 'Well, the family has to make a living.' He worked there for a number of years, I don't know, a year, two, three maybe. And he suffered an accident there, a fracture in his right arm, and they had to amputate his forearm. And when he recovered, they hired him as a supervisor in that brickyard."

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    Nezamyslice, 11.05.2022

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I said it‘s not fraternal aid. So I worked at the railway

Eva Bělková (2nd half of the 1950s)
Eva Bělková (2nd half of the 1950s)
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Eva Bělková was born on 7 February 1936 in Přerov to parents Hedviga and Bedřich Gazda. Her father, a lawyer, worked as a judge in Přerov before the war and later in Šilperk (today Štíty) in the Šumperk region. After the Munich crisis, the family had to leave the Sudeten town of Šilperk and the Gazdas moved to Velký Meziříčí, where they survived the war years. In the post-war period, her father Bedřich worked at the Extraordinary People‘s Court in Znojmo, and in the 1950s he was involved in political trials as a judge. After primary school, Eva trained as a basket-maker in Morkovice in the Kroměříž region, and then worked in the local Zadrev company. She continued her education at the secondary school for workers in Brno and from 1957 to 1961 at the Pedagogical University in Prague (now the Pedagogical Faculty of Charles University). Before entering the university, she married Antonín Bělka and together they raised their son Martin and daughter Barbora. As a graduate of the pedagogical school Eva taught at primary schools in Ivanovice na Hané and Prostějov. During the times of the temporary liberation in 1968 she joined the Communist Party (KSČ) and at the Ivanovice nine-year school she also served as the chairwoman of the KSČ basic organization (ZO). As chairwoman of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, she publicly condemned the August invasion by Warsaw Pact troops. This was followed by expulsion from the party and professional persecution. It was only after the Velvet Revolution that she was able to return to the teaching profession, until then she worked for the Czechoslovak State Railways (ČSD). In 2022 Eva Bělková lived in Nezamyslice in the Prostějov region.