Jana Šilerová

* 1950

  • "The first moment I remember is that we went on the tram to do some paperwork two or three days later. And we saw the tram stop somewhere near Elektra. And in that tram, everybody was small with black eye shadows. I wondered if they were all homosexuals. Not that I minded. I just wondered. Then the tram opened up, and a miner got off, and he threw up in a bin underneath the signboard. Then he got back on the tram and continued on his way. I remember that, but not in a bad way. It's a peculiar region, I couldn't think of anything else today. I wouldn't say it shocked us too much. Of course, we soon realized that these guys had a hard time washing their eyes when coming out of the mines. Hard work, but the characters of the men are still the same."

  • "I remember that we didn't mince our words much. Oh my God, Masaryk was always mentioned. And people got controlled or even fired from job for that. Or other anniversaries. I remember the anniversary of John Lennon's death. Not much happening. A few days later, we were invited to the State Secret Police office. They shouted at us, but that was all. The church was packed then. I lent out the records we had, afraid the hairy underground people wouldn't return them. But they did. My elders in Rychvald were looking down from the choir, afraid that the people will steal the hymnbooks or even smoke there. But that didn't happen either. They behaved perfectly. One guy, who looked like a typical underground, not a chartist, but a guy who would get arrested by the police just for his looks, took charge of everything. He was a very decent guy. Everything worked without any problems, of course, with the fact that there was a policeman sitting somewhere. They couldn't ban it. Something was quickly said and music was played. You didn't have to say anything anti-state, because Lennon was quite problematic himself. But when he sang about peace, what could the Secret Police say?"

  • "I was standing at the door. My mother was holding my hand, I was crying. I was about four years old. I had a bow in my hair. My mother sometimes left me with Mrs. Jeřábková to babysit. She had a son, he was studying medicine, and when he was in the army he decided to escape across the border. The story is well known. He managed to escape, but the border guards caught up with him and shot at him across the border. They shot him on Austrian territory and came for him. The Austrian settlers, the villagers, saw it. The guards dragged him back to our territory, they cured him and then executed him. And Mrs. Jeřábková wrote to Gottwald and all the Communist leaders. It didn't help. She had strange eyes. I asked my mother why her eyes were so red. And she said it was because she cried them out. Mrs. Jeřábková cried all the time."

  • "I was reported to the police also by my colleagues, by one in particular. When I was elected bishop and I was to go with him to serve at the altar and even to confirm his grandchildren, I needed to talk to him first. Not to demand an apology and then forgive him magnanimously. No. I needed to talk to him to clear the air, to be able to stand side by side at the Lord's table. And it worked. I was glad he understood that what he did was wrong. He was scared. And I can never judge another person's fear. That's a very tricky thing. We bring memory into our lives, but we cannot bring guilt into our lives. We would go mad."

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Let nothing frighten you. Let nothing upset you. Who has God in their heart, lacks nothing.

Jana Šilerová / 1974
Jana Šilerová / 1974
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Jana Šilerová, née Žáková, was born on 31 December 1950 in Znojmo. Due to her father‘s imprisonment and her mother‘s illness, she grew up with her grandmother from the age of eleven. In August 1968, as a grammar school student, she participated in protests in Znojmo against the occupation by Warsaw Pact troops. She graduated from the Hus Protestant Theological Faculty in Prague. After her ordination in 1974, she became a parish priest of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church in Vratimov near Ostrava. With her husband Vladimír Šiler, who was also a Hussite parish priest, she participated in the production and distribution of samizdat literature. She was repeatedly interrogated and followed by the State Secret Police (StB). In the 1980s, she was constantly transferred by the bishop from one place to another as punishment for her activities. She served in parishes in the Beskydy Mountains, and then she was transferred to Rychvald in Karviná in 1984. In 1999 she was elected bishop of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church for the Olomouc diocese. She held the office until 2013. She was the first female bishop in post-communist Europe. From 2001 to 2007 she sat on the Council of Czech Television and then on the advisory body of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. In 2021 she served as parish priest emeritus in Rychvald and in Bohumín.