Jana Dědečková

* 1951

  • 'In the morning on November 17 we were in Liberec at the court. René Matoušek, a Chart 77 signer, was on trial there. Mr. Benda had asked us to go there and so we did. That was the first time we heard a liberating verdict. The judge had to be suspicious about what was going to happen. He said that given the fact that our republic signed the Declaration of Human Rights, he was pronouncing a liberating verdict.'

  • 'I completed my apprenticeship and got a certificate as an electrician while being a mother-of-two and I left to Semily in 1979. My husband had died and I stayed alone with my children. A year before, in 1978 my mother had passed away and as all my three sisters lived in the Krkonoše Mountains, I decided to follow them to Semily to get closer. I applied for a position as an electrician in the local Apartment Management Company in Semily and I got a flat there.' ' That's very unusual – a female electrician – ' 'Well, not in the Ostrava Region, women did all sorts of job there. I could also weld and for some time, I was working as a crane operator. It was unusual in Semily, though. When I came there, everyone was surprised that a woman was working as an electrician.'

  • 'They were examining us thoroughly. I had to strip completely naked at the interrogation. There were only two women arrested, the rest of the arrested were men. They kept us locked in that garage. I was instructed about what to do by Mr. Benda, so I asked for water and food after 4 hours and I was waiting for the very end. Everyone had been interrogated and I was - as a punishment maybe – interrogated as the very last one. First there was a personal check and then the interrogating officer asked me what we had been doing in Prague. I said: 'Why do you make such a fuss over it, Prague is already filled with Trabant cars?' And they said everything must have rules. I wondered what rules can revolution have when it is mainly spontaneous. We made plans with the other protestors to meet again on the 10th of December, on the Human Rights Day, at a demonstration and the revolution preceded us a little when it happened on November 17.'

  • The political officer who lived in our block of flats met me at the first demonstration and said he would sort us out when the events are over. Of course I was scared. I was always scared. I feared they could take my children away, or take revenge on them. I was also scared they would shut me up. They would say I am a saboteur which was surely easy to do. There was a colleague from the Kolora factory and this one was a mad communist. He attended school with me and started informing on me. He would always say: 'You have four children so they will not put you in prison, I have tried many times myself.' This made me a little stronger. On the other hand, if you are threatened by police they will teach you a lesson when things calm down -- To be honest, I didn´t even believe things could calm down – not after the first demonstration. The Berlin Wall was about to be torn down and the people of our republic were among the last ones to go out into the streets. We were blocked by the Trabant Cars of the German fugitives. In that time I was not as scared as much as before.'

  • 'Unfortunately, in October we found ourselves at the Europe Hotel where they picked people up in a snap and they arrested both of us – me and my husband. Later newspapers reported there was an aggressive group at the Europe Hotel which was not true at all. While the boys in helmets were standing near the hotel, we were trying to persuade them to be with us and told them they were going against the people. They were just standing and almost crying. Then came the order and they started arresting those in the first rows. They loaded us on a bus but we had fun in there. We knew many people from other demonstrations. They brought us to the police station in Mělník and they dropped us off in a garage where we waited for the interrogations. They let us go at 2 or 3 a.m. It was too late for a bus or train, we couldn´t phone either and it was quite chilly that October 28. So there we were at night in a town we didn´t know and we couldn´t even tell anyone where we were. At home, our 17-year-old daughter was with the little children. In the end, we called from a family house and our nephew from Prague drove to get us. He also let our children know in Semily that we had been arrested and said they didn´t need to worry and that we were on our way home.'

  • 'Unfortunately, there was nothing happening in Semily. Friday, Saturday, Monday passed and nothing was happening yet. So I said we had to do something. At nights we went to get materials from Mr. Benda and to the film faculty and we arranged things with the boys, the Matěch brothers, Mr. Šlapák and some other boys from the faculty. When I was studying evening classes, they used to come to us and together we watched the TV news. At nights I was printing invitations for the Civil Forum meetings. We handed them out in Semily then. A police car was following us and they managed to remove some of the posters. I think it was Tuesday when we invited people for the first demonstration. Me and my husband, we liked to provoke so on November 23 we went to the Communist Party headquarters and declared we would organize a demonstration in the square where we had invited people to come and express their opinions about the actions in Prague. They said no and told us none of them would take to the street. We announced the demonstration for 6 pm and I had prepared a speech. It was terrible, I didn't know what to say! But meanwhile three student speakers appeared there. What was great, was the fact that when we came to the square, there were already some people and the sound system was installed. The local band Petr Hybsman and Comp. didn't know who the organizer was or anything, but they had installed the sound system. I was shocked! Well, the first demonstration was a bit of an embarrassment. But as there were students speaking - and not just me - the people started to react. At the end I asked them if they were coming tomorrow again and they agreed; so we started to prepare another one.'

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    Praha, Eye Direct, 05.06.2019

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You have four children so they won´t put you in prison, I have tried this many times myself

Jana Dědečková, née Kučerová, was born on June 28th, 1951, in Ostrava Vítkovice. She comes from five children, her three older sisters are from her mother´s first marriage. Her mother Anna was a worker, her father Miloslav came from Prague where he taught maths at a secondary school. He could not do his job though; according to Jana he had been sentenced for political reasons and later he worked in mines in Ostrava. In 1955, being unable to cope any longer, he committed suicide. Her mother had to take care of all the children on her own. Jana was not accepted to the secondary school and at the age of 15 she started working in the labs of a factory producing coke fuel. In 1968, at the age of 17, she got pregnant and married. She lost the prematurely born twins and her other children were born in 1969 and 1975. She worked as an electrician, and completed her apprenticeship. The Russian occupation made her interested in politics, so she started opposing the regime. In 1979 both her mother and the father of her children died. Then she moved to Semily and worked as an electrician. There she met her second husband Milan and had two other children with him. At the end of the 1980s, she met people from Charter 77, namely Václav Benda. She and her husband were monitoring legal cases with the politically persecuted. They took part in anti-regime actions and on October 28, 1989, while attending one of them, the couple were arrested and transported to an interrogation in Mělník. They were released at midnight. Jana stayed politically active in Semily. In the early days of the velvet revolution, she initiated demonstrations and continued to bring printed materials from Prague. While the Civic Forum (Občanské forum) was being divided, she was present at the founding of the Civic Democratic Party organization (ODS) in Vítkovice in the Krkonoše Mountains. In 1991 she started running a private guest house with her husband there. In 2000, she was elected as a nominee by the Civic Democratic Party to the Czech Television Council. She supported the removal of the Czech TV general director Dušan Chmelíček and his replacement by Jiří Hodač at the end of this year. These events which became known as the Czech TV crisis continued with a strike by Czech TV employees and mass public demonstrations motivated by the fear of losing the independent public media. Jana Dědečková and all members of the Czech Television Council were removed from office at the beginning of 2001. Until 2004 she lived with her husband in Vítkovice in the Krkonoše Mountains. After selling the guest house, the couple moved to Příbram where they ran a photo atelier and photo lab till 2013. In the time of recording this interview, Jana Dědečková is retired and mainly takes care of her grandchildren. Until 2018, she ran the website Virtually.cz.