Alena Vondrášková

* 1957

  • "The two kids lived in one room, the two of us lived in the living room, and there was a workshop and a hidden copier in the other room. So we copied materials once a month and always overnight. It was a proper night shift, it was like the rotaries during the war. We worked all night to get it done. My husband also had a friend come to help him but he fell asleep a couple of times. They were taking turns every two hours, and then I was separating the print outs and assembling them into complete issues. And when the friend fell asleep, the copier would sometimes get stuck and we would miss two hours of work. And he had to leave in the morning at four or five, and then we had to finish it... it happened twice, when it was really dramatic situation to get it done by six in the morning. Then my husband put the prints in his backpack and carried it to another place in Jižní Město, where Jan Ruml took it over in some apartment."

  • "We approached the border [on the way from Austria] and we had to open the bonnet and the boot, and now the strict customs officer, or actually the policeman because it was the border police, took his leather gloves... I shivered, it was like the movies from the war, when Hitler was always wearing gloves, and to me it was just like those German soldiers, because I had never seen Russian soldiers. That's how I felt about it. He put on gloves and just smugly walked around the car boot and made us take out the contents. Every single thing out... It was so humiliating, it was truly humiliating!"

  • "We moved to Michle during the holidays. We went to Bulgaria, and when we were in Bulgaria Czechoslovakia was attacked by Warsaw Pact troops. And then I started to realize it, I started to feel that something was wrong, that something was not right. What are the Russians doing here? My parents were in the party, but they never agreed with this. I didn't understand it. My parents didn't agree with this, they complained about what's being said on TV, they knew they were telling lies on TV, but still they were officially part of it... But when I asked them about it, they said, 'We want to live a trouble-free life, don't ask us about anything.' In 1968 we were in Bulgaria. On 21st August we found out what happened. We found out quickly, because we were staying with a family and they immediately told us what was happening in Czechoslovakia. My parents started arguing, and I was glad we weren't going home, because I didn't want to go home. And that's when the rebel in me started to come out. That's actually the exact moment."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    České Budějovice, 08.09.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:08:02
  • 2

    České Budějovice, 04.10.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:19:37
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I felt good about the resistance activities we were running

Alena Vondrášková, 1962
Alena Vondrášková, 1962
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Alena Vondrášková was born on 29 April 1957 in Prague to Pavel and Marie Zradička. Her parents were communists and although they did not identify with the regime, they considered membership in the party the easiest way to a trouble-free life. Alena had disagreed with this since childhood. She says that the rebel in her arose on holiday in Bulgaria in August 1968, when the family learned of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops. Although she was only 10 years old, she did not understand why her parents did not want to emigrate. She was bothered by hypocrisy and lies. Because of the conditions at the University of Economics, she left in the first year of her studies and started to work. But the situation at workplace was no better, so she returned to university. She married while still studying and had a son. After her second maternity leave had finished, she started working as an accountant and manager at the Juventus Hotel, which belonged to the International Union of Students. She met her second husband Jan Vítek there. He was secretly printing the illegal newspaper Lidové noviny at his workplace. When they later married, they printed the newspaper at home, always at night when the children were asleep, until the Velvet Revolution. Later the family moved to Myslkovice near Tábor, where her husband set up a ceramics workshop. Alena Vondrášková devoted herself primarily to her four children, but also to public affairs. She lived in Myslkovice at the time of filming (2021).