Marie Rychlíková

* 1928

  • “He was the chairperson of the Social Democratic Party and the (idea) of the merger of the communists and socialists came. My dad was the chairperson. I can still hear him as today, I was lying there broken in plaster and dad said: ‘The merger is going to take place on 25 June. I will present the members during the merger of the Czechoslovak Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party in the pub U Vávrů. But the three of us are not going to be admitted. They are going to expel me, a Mr. Sátora and I do not know who will be the third one. I am going to present the members but I am not going to become a communist because they had decided that they do not want me.‘ My dad died on 25 June at half-past two in the afternoon. He was forty-nine years old. He got tetanus in the afternoon on the day when he was supposed to hand it over. He was forty-nine years old when he died.” - “And what did Mr. Vítek say at his funeral?” - The Reverend said... I did not attend the funeral as I was lying in the plaster at home. My mum said that the Reverend said that it was not a funeral but a demonstration of people. So many people came there, the graveyard was full, and there were buses there. My dad was a really great personality. And Mr. Vítek said over his grave, my mother repeated it word for word: ‘Friends let us bow our heads, we are burying the last social democrat.‘ My dad died in the afternoon as a social democrat and all of them were communists by the evening.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Veselí nad Moravou, 23.03.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 01:31:59
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

A person feels that they lived in a very decent and proper family

The last photo of Marie Rychlíkové in Sokol costume, 1948
The last photo of Marie Rychlíkové in Sokol costume, 1948
zdroj: witness´s archive

Marie Rychlíková was born on 18 January 1928 in Uherský Ostroh as a third child of Štěpánka Pavlíková and František Pavlík. Her father worked in Baťa Shoe Factory, he was civically and politically active and that is why he was highly respected in his village. He founded a local group of the Social Democratic Party in Uherský Ostroh. He lost his post in the municipal council because the Nazis wanted to install their person in it. During WWII, Marie witnessed Operation Carbon when paratroopers led by František Bogataj were dropped in the region. After the liberation, her father started to have problems because of the increasing influence of the Czechoslovak Communist Party. He lost his job in the shoe factory because of his activities shortly after February 1948. He died on the day when the local Social Democratic Party in Uherský Ostroh and the Czechoslovak Communist Party were supposed to be solemnly merged (25 June 1948). In 1957, Marie got married to Břetislav Rychlík senior from Veselí nad Moravou and they raised two sons together: older Břetislav, who became an actor and documentary film-maker (*1958), and younger František (1964-2018) who published a Brno version of Střední Evropa (Middle Europe) magazine during totalitarianism.