Irena Podzimková

* 1933

  • “Now I tell you, girls, why I got kicked out from work. I met my future husband, but we were not going out together yet, but we used to play volleyball together in the street playground. But he was a conditionally released political prisoner. He was arrested already in autumn 1949, so very early, but only in three years in 1952, he got sentenced to twelve years. If it was one more paragraph, he would have gotten the death penalty. It was treason, high treason, espionage and I don’t know what else. And someone denounced me, I knew that he was a political and under condition and his brother used to come there to play before and said his brother was locked up. And then they released him, so he used to come and play too. Someone denounced me for the fact I was meeting such people, so the director called me in and asked who he was. And I refused to say the name, and said it was my personal matter. He got terribly mad and sent inspectors, who I was in charge of, and never forgave the one. So he came here and asked around for gossips, he got my abstract from criminal record as they were allowed to do that. And they called me again, there were many of them telling me with much pleasure they know who I was meeting, that the person was sentenced according to such and such paragraph and he could as well may have been hanged and so on. And I just replied: ‚I do not care about that.‘ I just kept saying: ‚I do not care.‘“

  • “Well it was wartime and life was not easy at all. What influenced me most was food. We did not have enough food and everyone was hungry. So my father, as he came from Pardubice, that means it was in the region of Polabí, he was from the village, where there were large estates, and he had some acquaintance there and they used to visit, not alone but with many other people in similar situation but the villagers did not want any money, as they were of low worth. Actually clothes, jewellery and other stuff were brought there for exchange. My father worked in Orion factory, which still exists nowadays, producing chocolate and candies. And they were getting certain amount of chocolate candies during war, so he used to exchange that for food in the village called Přelovice. But the problem was to bring it back home to Prague as there at Masaryk´s station, where he used to get off, there were German soldiers and if they caught someone with a suitcase full of food, he got sent to concentration camp and sentenced to death. So people were informing each other, whether the stations was guarded, or not, sometimes they were hiding, but sometimes the station officers also gave them a signal and they left their suitcases in the carriages running away barehanded.“

  • “I remember the assassination, as my mother was in Libeň right then taking the tram no. 14, when the assassination attempt took place and then she told us that there was a man standing at the platform and they heard the bang and shooting as Heydrich was shooting back at them, and the man said: ‚That was Heydrich, I hope they shot him down!‘ He was glad, the man was. And everyone was quite scared, looking at that and one of them, I do not know, whether it was Gabčík, or Kubiš, ran along the tram no. 14 between the gardens. He had a bike next to the fence, which he left behind and never rode it again. They were showing it at the Baťa shop. Mum came back home. In the street there were two policemen living in the same house and she rang the bell and told them: ‚Get ready for emergency.‘ And they wondered: ‚How come?‘ And she said: ‚They´ve just committed an assassination of Heydrich, I saw it from the tram going past.‘ Then they were appealing to everyone, who was on the tram to report, as they wanted a description of the running man, including the details. And mum was afraid, they would talk, as she said everyone she was actually on the tram but no one did and she was never summoned anywhere. So it turned out well.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha, 15.05.2017

    (audio)
    délka: 02:20:00
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

One should always behave so that he does not have to feel ashamed of his conscience

Irena Podzimková, 1957
Irena Podzimková, 1957
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Irena Podzimková, née Hornová, was born on 25 November, 1933 in Prague-Čimice. Her oldest one is the memory of mobilisation in 1938, when her father was saying good-bye. Yet a few days later he came back home. He began attending school in 1940 in Bohnice and then Kobylisy. She remembers a large lack of food during war and the fact her father used to exchange stuff for food in his native region of Polabí. And also air-raids above Prague and German military airport in Čimice, which was under attack of the aviators - tinkers. Her mother witnessed the assassination of Heydrich and the whole family was worried about her later. Irena Podzimková remembers the end of the world war, the Red Army soldiers they welcomed and German resettlement, which she witnessed with her relatives in Arnultovice near Trutnov and in Jablonec nad Nisou. She performed during the Sokol´s rally in 1948 and in the age of sixteen she started to work in her first job as an accountant. As she did not attend any schools, she continued to educate herself all her life, mainly during evening classes. She worked as a writer and an economist at the ministry of internal affairs. She got kicked out due to her husband, who was a former political prisoner, who was conditionally released from prison. Following political checks in 1958 and the birth of her son she could never work as the state officer again, not even in Prague. Moreover, in the same year her father was imprisoned in Příbram-Bytíz, where she visited him several times. Finally she got a job of a shop assistant and later could work as an accountant in several companies. She remembers the happiness from the velvet revolution and freedom after 1989.