Eva Kordová

* 1951

  • „Their ways of persuasion were not exactly civil. They kept threatening that they would take their farm over and they would move them out. Those were local people, for example the head of the local council and the chairman of the agricultural co-op. At the end, even comrades from the district council would come and try to talk my parents into joining. I remember that when they built the large cowsheds and took our cows, they made it into a public festival. My parents did quite a bit of crying for that.”

  • “We staged a protest, it was a sort of a sports show. We walked through the town and people were on our side because we protested. We said that for the anniversary of the Republic, we just wanted to show that we the young ones have a different opinion. Many of our teachers were punished for that, though. When we were taking our graduation exams in 1970, we thought that if we would have good grades, it would save the teachers and our headmaster, Mr. Horáček. Oh no! It didn’t work that way. We passed the exams with flying colours, almost all of us had nothing but excellent grades but as early as 1970, there was a big purge. They installed a bigwig comrade from above and this woman created such an atmosphere that students started denouncing each other.”

  • „One day, our parents went to see our grandma and grandpa in Prackov, they were sick. We children stayed alone at home and some men in leather coats came and asked where our parents were. They wanted us to tell them what parents do, whether we are accepting some pinted matter and so on. We were so scared that we almost cried and we didn’t want to tell them anything. Then, they left but later on, they summoned dad for questioning. Fortunately, they couldn’t prove anything and they didn’t put him in jail. However, it was all noted in our dossiers and none of us could study beyond the primary school.”

  • „Měla jsem zážitek, že šel voják po městě a za tou šarží šli dva vojáčci jako sluhové, co nesli kufr. Šli po městě a skupovali úplně všechno, co viděli. V Turnově ‚mezi mosty‘ byla dětská obuv. A tehdy nebyly capáčky. Stála tam velká fronta, lidé čekali na zásilku těch botiček. Přišel tenhle Rusák, šel rovnou k pultu, otevřel kufr a řekl, že bere všechno. Stál tam mladý člověk, chlap jak hora, přišel k němu a řekl: ‚Ty svině jedna, ty nám tu chceš skoupit boty pro naše děti?‘ A jednu mu ubalil. ‚Koukej vypadnout, ty hajzle!‘ Rusové opravdu odešli z krámu a my si říkali, co teď asi nastane. Nestalo se vůbec nic. Zmizli a byli pryč.“

  • „One day, our parents went to see our grandma and grandpa in Prackov, they were sick. We children stayed alone at home and some men in leather coats came and asked where our parents were. They wanted us to tell them what parents do, whether we are accepting some pinted matter and so on. We were so scared that we almost cried and we didn’t want to tell them anything. Then, they left but later on, they summoned dad for questioning. Fortunately, they couldn’t prove anything and they didn’t put him in jail.”

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    Liberec, 24.10.2021

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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It was a beautiful sight to see the red star falling down

Eva Kordová's secondary school graduation photograph. 1970
Eva Kordová's secondary school graduation photograph. 1970
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Eva Kordová, née Vlčková, first saw the light of this world on the 29th of November in 1951 in Turnov, during the difficult times of the 1950’s. Her parents were farmers and they owned a small farm in the nearby village of Klokočí. With pressure, threats, and by unattainable raise of their production quota, the local authorities tried to make them join the Unified Agricultural Cooperative. Oldřich Vlček kept it no secret that he disagreed with the ruling régime and that he listened to Radio Free Europe; there were several denunciations in that sense. This was all entered in his children‘s dossiers and it would disable them from getting any education beyond primary school, the comrades’ opinion was that Eva, a gifted girl, should be a cow carer. The school administration however issued her the needed credential for a secondary school and managed to get it accepted. During the liberation in the 1960‘s, it seemed that Eva could go and study at a university but her hopes were squashed by the invasion of the Warsav Pact armies and the following normalisation. In 1968, Eva helped her aunt with organising a petition against the occupation, a year later, she and her schoolmates staged a protest on the first anniversary of the occupation in the form of a sports show. After graduating from the secondary school, Eva wanted to go and study Czech and Latin language at the Charles University in Prague but her dossier prevented that. With an intercession from a member from the entrance exams committee, she was allowed to enrol an institute of library science and teaching. After finishing her studies there, she worked shortly in the Liberec library, from 1970, she has been working in the Turnov library where she still worked in 2021. She organised events for families with children, senior or disabled citizens. From 2002, she was continuously a member of the Turnov city council and one of the most popular clerk to officiate weddings.