Jana Eliášová

* 1947

  • “Only a week later we found out that something was happening. I was already working there and since I worked as the kindergarten principal, they called a meeting for all of us and they informed us very clearly that an act of sabotage had happened, and what tragedy it was for the entire nation, that the crazy ugly statue [of Klement Gottwald on the town square in Příbram] was blown up. It seemed quite funny to us and I think that we all struggled to keep a serious face.”

  • “My dad was an orphan, he only had a sister who was twelve years older, and she was the only one who believed and knew throughout my entire childhood that he was innocent. When we were going there during the summer holidays, there was a funny situation. Aunt dressed us nicely, made up our hair, and we went to the town and she walked with us to a kind of a small chateau, and it was a place where we used to live before, and there was that small factory, and the large workshop and the sawmill, and she would always tell us: ‘Girls, or sweethearts, or girls, this is yours.’ There was a signboard painted in red, which the Bolsheviks would always paint over with white, but the red paint must have been of some special type, because it always started shining through. And it said there in Slovak: Joinery and furniture making company, Jan Ryňák.”

  • “A culture house was being constructed and finished in Příbram. There was a fence around it, because political prisoners were building it in Příbram, and we would observe it from the window and once in a while my sister and I would make as if funny remarks, such as I would like to know what that guy did or whom he robbed or whom he murdered, and it did not occur to me at all how hard it had to be for my father, because he knew precisely who was there because the political prisoners had a red triangle badge on their backs or shoulders. He had to listen to our stupid talking, but since every prisoner had to sign a pledge of silence after his release, with the risk that if he said something, even at home, he would go back to prison, our father kept silent.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Skalice, 31.01.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 38:57
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Life has taught me not to grow attached to things and not to accumulate them

Jana Eliášová as a young woman
Jana Eliášová as a young woman
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Jana Eliášová, née Ryňáková, was born on August 22, 1947 in Humenné in Slovakia as the second of twins. Her mother Milada was a payroll accountant and her father Jan Ryňák owned a sawmill and a furniture factory in Humenné. The communists confiscated his factory in 1949 after the coup d‘état and they sentenced him to many years of imprisonment as a capitalist. They eventually changed his sentence to ten years of forced labour. As a result, the family frequently had to move all over Czechoslovakia. Jana suffered from constantly having to change schools and homes and she had problems with adapting to the new environment and she did not have any friends. Moreover, her father‘s punishment was never discussed in the family and only as an adult she learnt about the true reason why the family had to move so frequently. In 1959 the family moved to Příbram, where her father worked in uranium mines. Jana remembers the construction of the housing block estate and the culture house in Příbram by political prisoners. Due to her class origin she was not allowed to study at grammar school (which was called secondary school of general education at that time) and therefore she went to study at a secondary school of agriculture in Březnice. Later she completed her graduation exams and a three-year advanced study for teachers in Prague, specializing in kindergartens. Her first job placement was in Dobříš, and after her maternity leave she became the principal of the kindergarten in Ouběnice. Through her husband, who was a jazzman, she established contacts with the Prague dissent movement. She and her husband were distributing Charter 77 in Příbram as well as the samizdat newspaper Lidové noviny. In 1989 she was active in the Civic Forum in Příbram. At present she lives in Skalice near Daleké Dušníky.