Hana Panušková

* 1940

  • "My sister got a job as a cleaner in a hospital. It was a big deal that she got in. At least she could earn some money for clothes. And as she [was] cleaning in that hospital [one day], a sick person beckoned to her. She went up to him, recognized him, and he said to her, 'Boženka, please forgive me for reporting your father.' [The man] couldn't die..."

  • "A puppet theatre came to Miřenice, to that village. It was led by an artist. His name was Mr. Hlinka. And at that time, about '55, it was a very cold winter. And he stayed there quite a long time. He had a family of about four. They put on this play for us. Somebody from every house [went] to [watch] because it was such an entertainment for those people. There was no television back then. And we all looked forward to this theatre in the evening. He had an entrance fee of about three crowns. So we always sold some eggs to be able to go to the pub to see his show. He used to play these quite funny pieces. He used to do, for example, Madame Marianne, Mother of the Regiment. He was strange... He was apparently a trained tailor. He had beautiful costumes on those puppets. [Particularly] the Marianne puppet was beautifully dressed and this one neighbour kept saying, 'She's pretty!' Those people were so into it. They [the puppets] had pretty big figures. Well, it was magical. Or how many times we joked when there was a poster: 'The Drama of Love - An Evening in the Alder Woods...'"

  • "Because we had pigs, Dad killed one of the pigs. We didn't report it. He killed it illegally, so to speak. We didn't get permission to kill it because he didn't have a completed contributions. He was supposed to hand in about 4000 kilos of wheat, which was a big contribution for us, which he could hardly meet. And somebody reported him to police... He was reported by a man from the village and my father had to go to Bory prison for eight months. He started the sentence in October. We had horses, we had a barn full of cattle. And my mother stayed alone [still] with me. I was the oldest [of the siblings]."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Plzeň, 12.02.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 02:33:14
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Collectivisation antagonised the village people and destroyed the countryside

Hana Panušková at her youth
Hana Panušková at her youth
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Hana Panušková, maiden name Nelková, was born on 14 May 1940 in Miřenice in the Klatovy region into the family of the biggest farmer in the region. She remembers the air raids at the end of World War II, German soldiers and the arrival of the Americans. They arrived in Miřenice on 5 May 1945 and stayed for about five days, living in a cleared out firehouse. Until 1954, she attended the town school in the castle in the Nalžovské Mountains, where the school was established. That same year, her father, Josef Nelka, was imprisoned for eight months for killing a pig illegally. But it was more of a pretext. He was reported to police by a neighbour who later, on his deathbed, begged Hana‘s sister for forgiveness. Her father was serving his sentence in Bory prison, leaving her mother alone with the children. It was Hana, the eldest of the three siblings, who helped her on the farm. She could not become a kindergarten teacher as she had dreamed of. However, the farm did not last long and the family was forced to join a cooperative farm (JZD). On 10 June 1961, Hana married Miroslav Panuška, a former prisoner of the communist regime, from the family of a successful butcher. He served five years in communist camps for allegedly undermining the republic and collaborating with the West. His grandfather and brother also ended up in prison. The Panuška family moved to Sušice, where Miroslav worked for a construction company and later sold in shops with Hana. After the Velvet Revolution, Hana started a business in a Household Appliances shop, where she stayed until she was seventy-five.