Ruth Kopecká

* 1949

  • His name was František Krejčí. After 1948, a KSČ (Communist Party of Czechoslovakia) functionary. In the end he was given the death sentence for theft and the bestial killing of some women from the Jesenik district. He was an inconsistent person, maybe even a psychopath. He acted in a way that even the guards were afraid of him. At night he’d often menace Dad with the most varied forms of physical violence, for example, trying to strangle him. Other times he’d cry from emotion during the Christmas mass, which Dad and František Kosatík prepared. He knew that Dad had requested in a vain to be allowed a Bible multiple times. Once he came back from court and brought Dad a Bible, which had stolen for him from there. Dad didn’t know if he were being set up, so he put on the desk among the common things for all to see. After some time that Bible became a part of Dad’s personal belongings. He brought it home and now Mom looks after it. When they were together in the cell, Dad often got questioned about the chimneysweep. And about the laundry room and other weird things he didn’t understand. Once, right after another interrogation, they left him all day in the courtyard with a view of the gallows used to hang Franta Krejčí that very morning. He found out what it was all about from a guard in 1958, which was had been directly involved. At the time Radio Free Europe had up to date information about what was going on in prison, how the political prisoners were being treated, the behavior of individual guards, and released it to the public. The prison management along with the StB tried to track down the sources of information and channels used to get it out. It was a chance for Franta Krejčí, who then was trying hard to lighten his sentence, so he made up a story. He had noticed that sometimes Dad was getting some messages from the laundry room. Besides his other friends who worked there, there was a lady who was in court and sentenced at the same trial as him. The chimneysweep went regularly to the laundry room to clean the chimney there, a man from the outside. The laundry room was in contact with the inmates because of the hall-attendants there and of course the laundry. Thus Krejčí dreamt up that information was being getting leaked outside through the laundry room by Kopecký via the chimneysweep. They did a huge search in the laundry room, they questioned Dad over and over, but nothing came of it. Krejčí’s theory was left unproven and then there was nothing left to save him from his execution.

  • At the visits it was always that he sat on a wooden box in the middle between two prison guards. And on the other side of this barrier sat the families of the prisoners, of the inmates. That barrier was always between us, it was always from wall to wall, so it wasn’t even possible to walk between them. We couldn’t get to the prisoners, and they couldn’t get to us. We were separated. Somewhere in the middle of the barrier there was a wire net that went all the way to the ceiling, sometimes there was glass which had the wire inside, and sometimes there was only a really low panel. It was obvious that it depended on the current political situation, if it was intensifying or loosening up. The way that Mom and Dad touched and kissed despite all of those barriers is probably the worst thing I experienced during all my childhood. I knew Dad from photographs, he was a very handsome, elegant, and always very well-groomed man. Sometimes before the visit he wasn’t allowed to shave, once he even came with a week’s worth of stubble on his face, but his head was freshly shaven and was wearing an old army uniform and he looked more like Babinský than my father. And when there was a favorable political situation and some nice guards perhaps, Dad could even have me sit on his lap. I had a panic-inducing fear of him. You can see that my childhood experiences from Mírov are a lot of fear and anxiety. But these prison visits had their moments of lightness too. Like I was talking about the packages. Mom always had a carefully prepared package full of good things to eat. With chocolate, bananas, honey. Always ready in case she would able to give it to him. But it was only for the chance of it happening. Often she wasn’t allowed to. Or, rather, most of the time she wasn’t. Then I’d hardly be able to wait for when I’d finally be able to eat that banana.

  • So, the ninth of May was a state holiday. It was the fifteenth anniversary of the liberation. We were still in bed with Mom in the morning, when our neighbor, Mr. Lébl, rung our bell, and had the newspaper with him. On the front page there was a huge headline that President Novotný had announced political amnesty for political prisoners. Well that created a huge amount of havoc at home, Mom went to take out pajamas and slippers for Dad, which she had had already prepared anyway, truth be told, in case he happened to return. Only that, well, he didn’t come back. On May 9 he didn’t come home. So we waited the next day and still no. So we went to sleep. But after the last bus from Prague had come, someone tapped on the window around midnight. I’d been lying in bed for a long time, I wasn’t even being all that quiet. But in the morning I couldn’t stand it any longer and started to let it be known that I was already awake. Mom came and told me go to the bed to see Dad. But I just couldn’t do it, he was a total stranger to me. But in the morning he took us to school, and I was very proud of him.

  • Sometime at the turn of the twentieth century, when my great grandfather was the mayor of Řitka, orphans were brought to the village to be divided among the families. Tonča, who then was six years old, was one of them. She was tiny, neglected, she didn’t have any hair, she had wounds all over her head, she couldn’t speak, she acted almost like an animal. She was afraid of everyone, she slid into the corner or under the table and of course nobody wanted to take her in. So my great grandfather took her. And my grandmother was eighteen-years-old then and started to take care of Tonča. She started to look after her, started to take care of all of her wounds and maladies, to teach her to speak and she worked so hard with her that in two years Tonča was able to go to school and learn how to write. She learned how to read. Only that she acted a bit differently than the other kids. Thus she stayed in the family, she helped out, helped in the fields, and she didn’t talk much. But she was happy when someone came over and Tomáš and I always got into lots of trouble with her. So that’s the story of Tonča. Maybe I should add that she was inherited from generation to generation, and sometimes Vláďa and I would say that we’d get her one day, but my mom took care of her and Tonča died in her care, in Řitka, calm and happy to be home.

  • We always awaited this permission slip with great impatience. Before going to work in the morning, Mom would run to post office to see it hadn’t happened to come yet, because she was afraid that she would miss the date, because replacement ones weren’t given. She prepared a lot for the visit, and always carefully prepared a package. She looked for the right food and for something to pack it with. It was such that Mom wanted Dad to get things that he would be missing in jail. That meant something good to eat, like maybe some chocolate, some vitamins, which meant some oranges or bananas, but you couldn’t get them anywhere then, as kids we didn’t even really know of them. Packaging was also important because if it happened that was able to give him something, the weight of the food was really important. So when she wanted to bring some lard or honey, the weight of glass it was in really mattered, so she tried to get a hold of those plastic cups, which at the time were really quite rare. But I remember that you could get them from our butcher’s shop, and he set them aside and gave them to her so she could use them. Then there was no plastic packaging, no plastic cups or boxes. And she always took care to make sure they had something new in them, so Dad could see that we were doing well and had everything we needed.

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    Střítež nad Bečvou, 28.09.2013

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I didn’t know that Dad’s place was at home. Not in Mírov

Ruth Kopecká
Ruth Kopecká
zdroj: Pamět národa - Archiv

Ruth Kopecká was born on 12 April 1949 in Olomouc. Her father, František Kopecký, was a very religious man and maintained lively contact with the faith community of Olomouc. He was also the leading representative of the Czechoslovak National Social Party in Olomouc. In 1950 he was arrested and charged in the high profile trial, “Bukal Oldřich and co” in connection to the post-February deliberations of the Church of Czechoslovakia. The same as Oldřich Bukal, the witness’s father was given an 18 year sentence, the loss of his civil rights for 10 years, and the confiscation of all his property. Her mother, Ruth Kopecká, was originally from Řitka near Prague, and after the loss of their property she returned with her daughter and younger song Tomáš to her parents’ in the country. Due to health reasons, František Kopecký was not sent to work in the mines, but they held him in a prison in Mírov, where he did lighter work. His children were allowed to visit him twice a year. After serving ten years of his sentence, he was given amnesty and released. In 1970 Ruth married the Evangelical minister Vladimír Kopecký and they moved to Most. Later, from 1979, they lived together in Střítež nad Bečvou.