Danuše Stehlíková

* 1942

  • "At about six o'clock in the morning someone rang our doorbell. We were still in bed, we got up and three State Security members were at the door. They told us they were going to search the house. I experienced such a house search about four more times later. I thought that they would just look around, but they didn´t. We had a really big bookcase, and they took all the books out of the bookcase, and they shook it all up to see if there was any piece of paper. When they looked through that, they searched through the laundry, the dishes, everything. Then they told mi, 'There's some strange piece of paper here, some message. Do you know what it is?' So they let me read it. It was a kind of a love message from a woman. It was obvious to me that it was a set-up, that I was supposed to get angry with my husband. When I didn't get angry, they said they would take it with them, that they would ask my husband about it afterwards. Five hours later, when the search was over, they took him away for preliminary questioning. And he didn´t come back."

  • "I was offered that a few times. ’You can do office work. You have the education. All you have to do is to sign here saying you're taking it back. What would happen to you?' I said, 'Nothing would happen. But I'm not going to do it. I'm not going to do it!" That's how we were haggling like in the market."

  • "It's four or five people breaking into your flat, they have one civilian with them that they just picked up somewhere to give it that right feel. That's what I saw in him, that he was scared. And they say, 'Here's a search warrant.' They started immediately! They'll unmake your beds, they'll shake out every book. I used to have a lot of glass, fragile dishes, I liked it. And I always told them, "Gentlemen, if I hear a clink, you´ll see! ´ Nothing clinked. But they turned everything upside down. They put your laundry out, they put your books out. We had a lot of them. Over there, the wall was full of books. I was like, if they will look through these... They took each one, shook it out to see if there was anything in it, and they puti t back. And they systematically went row by row."

  • "This Ilja Prachař, the actor, suddenly I answered the phone and heard, 'This is Ilja Prachař, I would like to visit you.´ And I thought, 'Jesus Christ!´ So he made an appointment, came in and said, 'Mrs Stehlíková, we found out about you, that you're in trouble. A couple of my friends and I are going to put money together every month and give you eight hundred crowns.' It would be ridiculous now, but it was good at the time. For maybe a year, this Prachař would always bring me eight hundred crowns, we had a chat and he left."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 18.06.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:53:18
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 09.01.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:58:40
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 3

    Praha, 06.02.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:40:43
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I signed it so that something would actually happen here

Danuše Stehlíková, 2023
Danuše Stehlíková, 2023
zdroj: Post Bellum

Danuše Stehlíková, née Klečková, was born on 20 June 1942 in Potěhy. She graduated from economical school in Havlíčkův Brod in 1960 and got married a year later. She and her husband Josef Stehlík lived in Prague. Josef Stehlík joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) in 1948. He belonged to the reformist stream, in 1968 he disagreed with the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops and was expelled from the party. In 1969-1970 he wrote several articles criticising the occupation and the oncoming normalisation. He was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison in 1971. These were difficult times for Danuše Stehlíková. She had to take care of her children on her own and also experienced oppression by State Security (StB). She suffered financial hardship and her friends used to help her. At the end of 1976, she and her husband signed Charter 77. The Stehlík family then experienced several house searches, interrogations and harassment by the communist state. After the Velvet Revolution, the witness worked for three years as a secretary at the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and Democracy of the Federal Ministry of the Interior, which later transformed into today‘s Security Information Service (BIS). Before her retirement, she also worked at her son‘s construction company, where she helped with administration. Her husband, Josef Stehlík, died in 2011. Danuše Stehlíková was living in Prague in 2023.