Věra Houšková

* 1941

  • “In the meantime, while he was solving it with them, I went to the hospital. His brother Vladimír gave me a lift there. And he said: ‘I looked up and two helicopters were flying there.‘ And he [husband] said: ‘That was us! That was us!‘ Well, he took me to Krč, and he handed me over there. They were so nice to me there; they did not even want any names. I just told them that my husband had been taken away from me and that I did not know anything about him, so they were very sympathetic."

  • “Well, I found out at night that my water broke and that I had to go to the maternity hospital. So, my husband went to have a look because the tanks had been driving under our windows and along the castle the whole night. So, he went there to look whether it was possible to set off and he did not come back. They arrested him and called Štiřín (the castle – trans.) a basic unit of the counterrevolution. A centre was located there. So, they nicked the manager of the centre, I do not know what kind of centre it was. They nicked four people like this. Two managers and some passers-by. A blue-collar worker in a newsboy hat was riding a bike, so they nicked him as well. They were four of them and they put them in an armoured car. He said: ‘Well, it was such a feeling! I was wearing a violet T-shirt, a new one, and was saying to myself – a hole will appear in it.‘ He just did not believe he would survive it.“

  • “Well, they nationalised the brickworks in 1948 but given the fact they did not have any other specialist, they let him keep working there as the manager of the brickworks. So basically, nothing changed for him. He accepted it because he knew that such was the time, so he kept on working as the manager of his brickworks. Well, until 1953 or 1954, and then it happened that some sediments appeared in clay in the clay pit. We did not know at all what those were. And those sediments were causing the bricks to crumble. However, it happened with very few bricks. And from the time they found out, there was a person who inspected the carts and threw away the defective bricks. But before they found out, they excavated it and took it to the brickworks on carts, it was dried, burnt, and so on. Well, he, of course, did not know it, nobody knew it, and once it happened that somewhere on the sidewalk in Prague there were our bricks from our brickworks piled up and they were crumbling. So, they pinned it on him as sabotage, that he had done something to make the bricks start crumbling. When this happened, they picked him up and arrested him."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 04.10.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 56:37
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 13.10.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 51:46
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

People do not feel like singing any more

Věra Houšková as a bride
Věra Houšková as a bride
zdroj: witness´s archive

Věra Houšková, née Řezáčová was born on 1 June 1941 in the village of Nová Brázdim in the family of Václav Řezáč, owner of a prosperous brickworks. Although it was nationalised after the events in February 1948, the father could stay there working as a manager for several more years thanks to his expertise and popularity among employees. His work was ended because of an unfounded accusation of sabotage. Despite her “problematic” origin, the witness was admitted to study at the School of Economy in Resslova Street in Prague and when she graduated from it, she worked as an accountant. The family moved to Jílové u Prahy where Věra Řezáčová got married to Jan Houška in 1961. Her husband was under dramatic circumstances shortly arrested as a counter-revolutionary by the Soviet Army in August 1968. She and her husband worked in the hospitality industry since the 1970s. At the time of recording in 2022, she lived with her family in Jílové u Prahy.