Jana Sargánková

* 1940

  • "Jesus Mary, 11 years old. So mom was about to have a stroke. We cried. Christmas was right after that. So we went to dad's. Mom fried the fish, made a salad, got warm clothes. Because we knew from Dr. Polášek that dad would be taken somewhere, that he would not stay in the detention center in Ostrava, that he would go to some kind of labor camp. We brought him the hygiene items and such. We rang the bell, they came, only to be told that Rett was not allowed any visitors. Although all post-sentence prisoners were allowed to visit. Because the father probably, I think, as I knew him, did not look welcoming. It was cold. It was so terribly cold in the year 1954! I didn't have warm shoes, I walked in half shoes because we didn't have enough money for shoes."

  • "Another experience of mine was what February 1948 was like, I recall it every time. I left school at the age of eight; I was in the second grade. And now I came home. Father sat in that dining room all collapsed, mother beside him. Dad was always the hero as it used to be. And I asked: 'What happened?' And my father cried. So I asked my grandmother what it was, I was so surprised. And my grandmother or my mother told me, because my father couldn't even talk to me, that in front of the windows of his office, that was Fryštát, nowadays Karviná, communists and workers were shouting: 'Hang Rett!'"

  • "When my father was locked up, no one came to see us in Ostrava. Hardly anyone, not even family. Because everyone was building a career and what if they came to us, he was an enemy of the state and so on. But a few acquaintances remained. However, dad was called by the State Security for questioning. He learned there too, we had to have an evesdropping device in the house, they were aware of whoever came to us, how long he had been there. And the best part was that they told him about our grandmother. Because when the radio was playing in our house, my grandmother used to say: You communist whores, you will be hanged and so on. So they told him to ask his mother-in-law to behave. Because if she talked like that, things would have ended badly for her. Well, grandma was over seventy, just like me now. Well, dad said he couldn't talk like that. Well, we knew and pondered with whom and from whom we have the device. Then we learned that a secret policeman lived above us in Poruba and that he somehow served it there.''

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    Ostrava, 14.02.2017

    (audio)
    délka: 01:30:15
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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The communists arrested my father and destroyed the life of the whole family

Portrait, 1960s
Portrait, 1960s
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Jana Sargánková, maiden name Rettová, was born on January 23, 1940 in Ostrava. Her father was Ladislav Rett, head of the legal department of Ostravasko-karvinské doly and an active social democrat. Due to his disagreement with the transition of the Social Democratic Party to the Communist Party after the February coup in 1948, he was deprived of his job and had to work as a laborer. In 1954, he was arrested and sentenced to 11 years in prison in a political trial. The witness then grew up with her sister, mother and grandmother in modest conditions until 1960, when her father returned for amnesty. She couldn‘t study at university because of the personnel crisis. Even after the father‘s return, the family was further persecuted, e.g. they discovered that they were being eavesdropped at home by State Security. Jana worked for 30 years in the regional cultural center in Ostrava. Her childhood experiences made her resent the communist regime throughout her life. Her sister Eva, married as Vláhová, joined the work of the Confederation of Political Prisoners after the November coup in 1989 and founded the Association Daughters, which unites the daughters of political prisoners.