Zdeňka Formánková

* 1936

  • "Then, of course, it did us harm that we were at Jan Palach´s funeral. There was a huge queue before we got to the coffin to be able to put the wreath there. There were a lot of people there. It all happened in silence. Nobody dared to shout anything or carry any slogans. It was perhaps a good thing that such proper respect was paid to the man. I think the funeral was very dignified, nobody dared [to do] anything there. After Palach was buried in his home place, we used to go there to see the grave. Then they moved him to Olšany [cemetery in Prague], so we would go there too."

  • "On 21 August we immediately met in the clubroom to decide what we could do. The Soviets were distributing their leaflets and we were burning them and issuing our own leaflets. The director provided us stencil papers, and we got paper from printing companies in Prague. At that time all the people were against [occupation] and everybody tried to help somehow. So it was no problem to get something somewhere. We managed to get a shop window here in the town where we published the latest news. Not everybody was able to catch them somehow. I bought a transistor radio on that August 21, and we captured the news in shorthand and transcribed it on these flyers to keep people informed."

  • "On 1 January 1945, my little brother was born, and my mother always had him in a basket bellow the window, while she was cooking. They gave him the name Vladimír because they expected that peace would come soon [“mír “meaning peace, trans.]. I was looking out the window and suddenly I saw a plane, they were not fighters like today, they were such heavy bombers. I said to my mum: 'Mum, look, there's a black dot falling'. And mum said, 'You don´t say, sirens weren´t wailing, nothing´s going on.' I remember it as today, how my mother caught my brother, he was about five months old, and we fled down to the basement. There wasn´t wailing, and they were bombing. Later on I was always scared."

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    Poděbrady, 13.11.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 01:38:57
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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The way we raise these kids, that´s the way this nation will be

Zdeňka Formánková in a period photo
Zdeňka Formánková in a period photo
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Zdeňka Formánková was born on 30 June 1936 in Žilina, Slovakia. After Czechoslovakia ceased to exist in 1939, the family moved to Moravia to live with the witness´s grandparents. There she repeatedly experienced air raids and bombings. After the communist coup, she studied at a higher economical school and subsequently completed her education in pedagogical field. She taught in Pečky and later in Poděbrady. There she led a Pioneer group called Rebelants and together they got involved in activities against the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. They published their own magazine and were putting up flyers around the town mocking not only the occupying soldiers. In 1969 she attended the funeral of Jan Palach. Soon after, she was expelled from the Pioneer organization and lost her teaching job. However, no one could stop her from continuing to meet secretly with her group in her flat. After the Velvet Revolution, witness continued to work with children and participated in events organized by the Czech Tourist Club.