Jitka Vávrová

* 1969

  • "It started for me during the entrance exam for politics, you could choose two questions - and I had: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, or the law of the negation of the negation. I chose the law of the negation of the negation, which was a trouble, but I was admitted anyway. I even had to appeal, I didn´t pass the politics exam, there was an appeal, and finally they took me. Then about once a fortnight or so they summoned me before a comission. There were some comrades sitting there and they kept asking me about my parents, what´s their opinion about the political set-up. I kept telling them that nothing and none, because in our family it was not really discussed, for me it was not an issue. We knew we were blacklisted, but it wasn't cruel. The interrogation always ended with asking if I wanted to join the Socialist Youth Union (SSM) - and I always told them I didn't want to. And why? I just don't. I don't like big organizations of any kind. In the spring of 1989, when I was in front of the committee again, I had already completed two study terms, they told me to join, that I would regret it. I said I didn't want to. And it was already exam period, I didn't pass the math exams, although I know I calculated what I should have calculated - at least enough to get some grade. It was explained to me that I would go [away]. So I went."

  • "My grandfather was then (imprisoned) in Germany for about two years. I read somewhere that he also carried out resistance activities there. He gained bread and distributed it to those who had none and were the worst off, those who were sentenced to death and were awaiting execution. Even there, he was respected for continuing to help. Then he was taken to Ostrava for trial, and there he was sentenced to death. Eight months after the death sentence, they guillotined him at Pankrác." - "When was that? What was the date?" - "February 22, 1945. In fact, he must have been one of the last people to be beheaded by the guillotine, because after that they were just cleaning up and leaving."

  • "(The grandparents) were separated, each of them taken to another place. My grandmother was in Brno and my grandfather in Ostrava. But then, fortunately, one day they were brought to one place for interrogation, and Mr. Bednář was there, and my grandfather and grandmother. At the moment when they were being taken for questioning, my grandfather fortunately managed to instruct my grandmother that she should definitely claim that she didn't know Mr. Bednář at all and that he was my grandfather's cousin with some made-up name. Grandma stuck to this statement all the time - and it saved her life, because they had no evidence against her at all, she didn't know anything, and that's why they let her go after fifteen months." - "How did she remember the prison? Did she tell you anything about it?" - "Not about the prison. Then she told me about how hard it was to get back to normal life and find her way back to Stáník, to her son, because after all she hadn't raised him for two years. So it was hard, but Grandma didn't talk about prison."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Liberec, 07.07.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:17:41
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Her grandfather was executed by the Nazis. The communists denied his family the freedom he had died for

Jitka Vávrová in the early 1970s with her aunt Anežka Karasová, sister of the executed Antonín Zavřel
Jitka Vávrová in the early 1970s with her aunt Anežka Karasová, sister of the executed Antonín Zavřel
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Jitka Vávrová, née Zavřelová, was born on 28 October 1969 in Děčín. Her father‘s family was involved in anti-Nazi resistance during World War II. Her grandfather, Stanislav Zavřel, born in 1910, worked as a teacher in Morkovice near Kroměříž during the Protectorate and was active in the resistance organization Defence of the Nation. He was hiding one of its commanders, František Bednář, at home for two months. After denouncement made by a police informer, the Gestapo arrested Stanislav Zavřel, his wife Anna and his sister and imprisoned them. Grandmother was not proven guilty and was released after fifteen months. Witness´s grandfather remained imprisoned until 22 February 1945, when the Nazis executed him in Pankrác prison in Prague. His sister Anežka survived the concentration camp and the death march. After the war, Anna Zavřelová remarried, also because her murdered husband had wished so. Witness´s father, Stanislav Zavřel Jr., later worked at the Mikov knife factory in North Bohemia. He and his wife left the Communist Party in 1968 after the collapse of the reformist wing and the beginning of the Soviet occupation. Despite being the author of successusful patents, her father then worked in lower posts in the company. Jitka Vávrová followed her father in technical education and after graduating from a secondary technical school in Varnsdorf, she started studying the University of Textiles and Engineering in Liberec. After she refused to join the Socialist Youth Union, the communists expelled her from the school. Nevertheless, she worked as a design engineer and did not change her field of work. Throughout her life, she was interested in the fate of her ancestors and managed her grandparents‘ rich archives. In 2022 she was living in Liberec. We were able to record her story thanks to the support of the Statutory City of Liberec.