Jana Šmídová

* 1949

  • "It was actually accessible from the third floor. That's how you would go... Our editorial office was on the first floor. Petr Kučera made it possible, again. Actually, mainly people who knew [Václav] Havel worked there. There was always someone in the editorial office. The balconies were arranged, which was absolutely imposing, but then it kind of passed us by. Already the second, third... But in the beginning, it was such a great idea. I'm not quite sure, but I think one of the socialists, Milan Škoda, thought of it, I think. After that, it became absurd because everybody wanted to go on the balcony. Not only those from the Czech Republic or Czechoslovakia or Prague or just whoever thought they were important. There were also such cases as a black reporter in a white suit from the Los Angeles Times who happened to be in Prague. Suddenly, a lot of foreign journalists were pouring into Prague. And we said to ourselves that we were the guardians of the gallery, or the balcony, because we knew we couldn't let this man in the white suit in. It was cold, and he had this fur coat. It was amazing, I'll never forget it. Cigar... He was simply told that something was happening. I'm not sure if he even knew where he was. But a balcony is a balcony, well. So we kind of sorted it out."

  • "Anyway, I used to work those shifts [in the radio newsroom]. I still remember that around the nineteenth or twentieth of August [1968], when the negotiations in Čierna pri Čope took place, I was on duty, and the telegrams started coming in, saying that there were some troop movements and so on. It was getting serious. The regular editors stayed there, but I went home. And in the morning... Oh, we even went to a party. And within that company that had gathered there, a few people already knew it wasn't quite right. So we talked about it, and then I went home. In the morning, the phones started ringing very early, saying that we were being occupied, that the Warsaw Pact troops had invaded us. I was an idiot and said, 'I have to go to the radio immediately.' I walked down Vinohradská Street and that's where it was all happening in the morning, on the twenty-first of August. And I tried to get to the radio. Because I had to go to work, of course! I had a shift there, even though I was just an assistant. But it was no longer possible. There was a tank on fire. I remember some young boys had such bright ideas like they were going to ram the fuel tank with a cramp iron. They were just like the ones who are driving around Ukraine now. Because on the hull of that tank, there were these tanks, these barrels. And they were debating that the cramp iron could break through it. I was right in the pit, in the middle of what was happening there. There was a tank on fire. They started shooting. Then we ran away. Meanwhile, the buildings opposite the radio station were burning. I experienced it all first-hand. Then we went into some house on Balbín Street. Because even though we were very combative... When you hear shooting nearby... So we went to hide in that house. Something flew through the mezzanine there, too, and it whizzed quite fast."

  • "We got into that zone, it was pretty interesting there. There were all sorts of guys, dudes, probably top experts, who were guarding the place. We also saw Western car brands. There were, I think, some Americans there at the time. Now I'm talking about entering the zone, which was thirty kilometres long. We had to register there. We were given an escort from this team. I saw a lot. We had some dosimeters that were supposedly not functioning well. We were there for less than a day, so if I was affected, it was more by the experience. We were in Pripyat, the town. We saw the famous [Ferris] wheel. I even had a camera, so I took some pictures, and then they published it in the newspaper. But it was very foggy. The people who guided us were absolutely fantastic, they sensed what we wanted to see. But I had this itinerary... Then we went to see some old lady who lived there in these beautiful little houses, blue and green. So we visited these older people who were staying there who didn't want to leave their homes and their dead relatives in the cemeteries. We were in her living room. It was so tidy... She said, 'I haven't seen any people for so long...' We asked her how she was doing there. She said, 'It's so sad now in the fall, but in the summer, the grandkids come here and all that. I grow strawberries for them.' And we almost fainted."

  • "And then I went to Michal [Žantovský, then a Reuters reporter], whom I knew, and I said, 'But he's not dead. He's standing right here next to me.' And then Milan [husband] left with the boys. And I stayed there the whole evening. There were no communication sources. Coincidentally, there was another Martin Šmíd who studied matfyz [Mathematics and Physics - transl.], a classmate of my son's, but he lived in Beroun. I believe Benešov or Beroun. And someone had to go to Beroun to check if it wasn't him. His classmates went there by train. And this Martin Šmíd met them there in his pyjamas. He didn't know at all what was happening. It was piling up like a snowball. It was a long time ago. I have thought about it for a long time, we've all thought about it. The family, of course, was struck. I can't imagine if I hadn't known where he was... But he was at home with me the whole time. So we just watched as police of all kinds started to crowd around our house. They offered us security. There were state police, municipal police, and I don't know what, all of them in the Písecká Street where we lived. One forgets, that's true, but I have to say that after all that, I really know everything about it. We all testified many times. We testified at the commissions. And I still think we'll never know what really happened. If it was a series of crazy coincidences... And now, I'm getting to the important part. Martin was supposed to go with his Slovak friend to visit his grandmother in some village below the Tatras, where there was not only no telephone but perhaps no electricity either. Simply nowhere. He was supposed to be unreachable for four days. And later, we found out we had a tapped phone. That's the kind of card someone could play, that Ace."

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I was told that my son was dead. But he was sitting next to me!

Jana Weinerová Šmídová in 1968
Jana Weinerová Šmídová in 1968
zdroj: witness archive

Publicist Jana Šmídová was born on 10 April 1949 in Prague. Her father, journalist Milan Weiner, came from a Jewish family that suffered from the Holocaust. He himself survived imprisonment in Auschwitz and other concentration camps but lost his brother, father, grandparents and other relatives. After the war, he worked as a journalist, but as a result of the anti-Semitic purges of the 1950s, he had to work in less exposed positions for a time. He was rehabilitated in 1963 and then founded the International Life Editorial Office at Czechoslovak Radio, which he directed until he fell ill in 1968. He died on 25 February 1969. Her mother, Marie, née Trčková, worked as a clerk. Jana grew up with her grandparents in Jindřichův Hradec until the age of ten when she moved with her grandmother to her parents in Prague. Following her father‘s example, she gravitated towards the journalism profession and wrote her first journalist texts while studying at the grammar school in Přípotoční Street. In 1967, she graduated and passed the entrance exam to the Faculty of Journalism. During her studies, until the arrival of normalisation, she worked as an editorial assistant in the foreign editorial office of the Czechoslovak Radio. In the days following the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, she participated in the distribution of anti-occupation leaflets. Many of her classmates who took part in these anti-occupation activities were expelled. She herself escaped the purges also thanks to becoming pregnant, and in 1970 she gave birth to her son Martin. She and her husband, TV editor Milan Šmíd, lived for several years in Louňovice near Jevany, where their younger son Michal (1973) was born. During the first few years of normalisation, she devoted herself mainly to her children. Later she worked as a technical editor on night shifts at Mladá fronta (Young Front - transl.). In 1983, she joined Svobodné slovo (Free Word - transl.) as an editor. In 1988, she had the opportunity to go to Chernobyl to report on the consequences of the nuclear disaster. In the days after 17 November 1989, her family was struck by a rumour about the „dead student“ Martin Šmíd, who allegedly died during a demonstration on Národní třída. At the beginning of 1990, she joined Lidové noviny (People‘s Newspaper - transl.) as an editor and later worked at Svobodná Evropa (Free Europe - transl.) and Czech Radio. She also contributed to the Federation of Jewish Communities Rosh Chodesh bulletin. In 2021, an album of 41 unique photographs depicting authentic life in the Terezín ghetto and portraits of its prisoners was discovered in her father‘s (Milan Weiner) heritage. The album is known as Album G. T.