Hana Pelikánová

* 1960

  • "František Lízná and I met in Olomouc at the plaster shop, where my husband and I went independently. My father, František Lízná, was followed there by little girls who went to the plastering shop. We knew that he was a strong personality, that he was a priest without state approval, a persecuted priest. We enjoyed going to see him, he talked to us, I actually went there before I went with my husband, with the Olomouc underground group. So my husband went there too, and that's where we met him, and then we had a very, very personal relationship. In fact, my husband and I were secretly married after he was released from prison. We were the first people he married, he was very moved, he cried at it and it was secret. It was in a monastery in Borotín, where we were in secret. We had to go in the dark, at night. He worked there as a nurse for the disabled women. There was a chapel there, it was a former convent. He was there as a nurse, so it was arranged that my godmother would be there, who was also arranged for me by Father František Lízna. She was a holy woman who lived a religious life, but she was not a nun and now she still lives in Kroměříž, Josefka Bilíková, she was there and my godmother, Sister Magdalena, a barefoot Carmelite."

  • "Or we were confirmed in Prague. At that time there were a lot of dissidents there who were confirmed by Cardinal Tomášek, my godmother at that time was Sister Magdalena Schwartzová, also a dissident, a fighter against communism, she was imprisoned under the fascists and communists, so Father František Lízna gave her to me as my godmother. At that time, in that church, the State Security officers were palpable. There were also a lot of people from the Charter who were confirmed there, and the Chartists were their godparents. You could feel the negative energy of them so strongly. I was standing and there was a guy standing next to me who was very nervous, as if he was full of devils, and I thought to myself, 'Well, he's clearly a State Security officer.' And more of those men who just stood there frowning were around, but fortunately they didn't intervene. My husband's godfather was Father František Lízna."

  • "When they did the search, our first son, the oldest, was six months old. We used to go to see Vlahovič in Moravská Huzová - he was also a chartist. Then we went to see Tomáš Hradílek in Lipník, to see his father František Lízná, who lived in Velke Opatovice, with his mother at that time, he was without state permission, he was often imprisoned. So one day we went somewhere like that, I think to the Vlahovič´s place, the State Security officers took advantage of the fact that we were not at home. My husband's mother was looking after our six-month-old son, and they broke in, and they did a complete search of the whole house, and he was crying all the time because he was afraid of the foreign men. That was so rough, when we arrived at midnight, for example, and now we saw the place, the havoc and the State Security officers... it was such a rough situation."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Olomouc, 03.02.2025

    (audio)
    délka: 02:34:59
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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I was encouraged by my faith

Hana Pelikánová, nee. Balášová, graduation photo, 1978
Hana Pelikánová, nee. Balášová, graduation photo, 1978
zdroj: Archive of the witness

Hana Pelikánová, née Balášová, was born on May 1, 1960 in Olomouc as the younger of two daughters. Her father, a reformist communist, was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia after 1968. Hana grew up in an anti-communist environment. During her studies at the Slovanské Gymnasium she became involved in the Olomouc underground scene. Soon she was also travelling to Poland and Hungary, where there was more freedom. In 1978 she started dating Vít Pelikán, and together with him she converted to Christianity. They married in 1980. Hana joined the dissident milieu and anti-regime activities. She and her husband multiplied and distributed samizdat, organized cultural evenings, prayer meetings, and supported prisoners. They maintained contacts with the Prague dissent around Charter 77, members of VONS and activists from all over Moravia. The family was monitored, their house was bugged. In 1986, because of her anti-regime activities, she was prevented from taking state final exams at university, and she defended herself by appealing to the Minister of Education, in which she revealed political reasons. Thanks to his intervention, she finished school in 1987. In the autumn of 1989, she and her husband participated in organizing a rally in Olomouc and were at the beginning of the local Civic Forum. They raised five children - Ondřej, Matúš, Veronika, Šimon and Jakub. She worked as a teacher until her retirement in 2020. She holds a Certificate of Participation in Resistance and Resistance against Communism. In 2025 she lived in Olomouc.