Olga Řeháčková

* 1937

  • "The paper arrived that the father owes more than a million crowns. We thought it was funny, but it wasn't. At that time, my father worked in Škodovce in Mladá Boleslav, his salary was garnished and he never had more than six hundred crowns. It was the amount for wages to employees, insurance and possibly the purchase of material from January 1 to February 25, 1948. The communists nationalized the factory retroactively to January 1, 1948, which the communists began to enforce from 1953."

  • “When they came for dad, they were doing a house search. Even in the room where I slept. Grandma Klozarová held me in her arms so I wouldn't be afraid. They scattered everything, threw all the books on the floor. Then they took dad to a forced labor camp, TNP. He was never convicted. There was no judgment and no one knew how long he would be there. There they interned all the inconvenient. He was not convicted, he was only sentenced to forced labor. The reason was that he had influence over his former employees. He first worked in the mines in Starkovo, then in Pardubice."

  • “My dad bought machines for the factory, which he bought in 1947. They were built in the factory in crates. They were from Switzerland and described with German inscriptions. So the communists smashed them like German machines. It didn't even make it to Kosmos Čáslav. Similar machines for granulated powders did not appear here until twenty years later."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Hradec Králové, 25.07.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 01:27:57
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - HRK REG ED
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Father was imprisoned in a forced labor camp for two years without the communists accusing him of anything

Olga with her mother in 1939
Olga with her mother in 1939
zdroj: Rodinný archív

Olga Řeháčková is the last surviving direct relative of the famous entrepreneurial generation of the Pilnáček family, whose history dates back to 1795. She was born on December 22, 1937. Her grandfather was J. V. B. Pilnáček, the owner of a soap, cosmetics, washing powder and candle factory and also the mayor of Hradec Králové between 1929 and 1942. Her father was J. P. Z. Pilnáček, co-owner of the factory. The prosperous family business was expropriated by the communists in 1949, the unique new machines from Switzerland were broken and the production was transferred to the state-owned company Kosmos Čáslav. The grandfather died because of injuries inflicted on him by unknown perpetrators who brutally beat him in the park. The crime was never solved. The father was interned in a forced labour camp (TNP) for almost two years. The family was later deported from Hradec Králové to Stará Huta in Orlické Hory. As an excellent expert, the father never returned to his profession and supported himself by doing auxiliary labour jobs. In the 1950s, he was senselessly and unfairly accused of embezzling 1,300,000 crowns, which he was supposed to embezzle from his former factory. The family was thus forced to live on the subsistence minimum during their entire active working life, because the alleged amount owed was deducted from the father‘s salary. The witness had problems getting into studies at all, and she only managed to graduate from secondary school due to the coincidence of favourable circumstances in Prague. The witness‘s husband worked as a doctor. Now (2018) Olga lives in Prague. The company was returned to the family in restitution. However, the original production could no longer be resumed. Reconstructed buildings are rented out to business entities, and the administration of the building is taken care of by the son of the witness, Jakub Řeháček.