Sylva Wernhartová

* 1939

  • "I had no idea. We didn't find out until many years later what had actually happened, why my husband had been taken from his job, why I had been arrested and taken to the apartment for a search. I was on afternoon duty, I didn't even have time to tell the patient that I had to take off his compresses because I had to leave. I just couldn't do it. I had no idea what was going on, what was the matter. But I was scared. And that meant that I turned on everything in my brain that I could, and I knew I couldn't say anything wrong. That I had to mind my every word. I didn't know what I was in for at all."

  • "The Aesthesians brought me to the apartment. I understood that something had happened. I endured a four-hour interrogation. They showed me a document and there was some sedition. And I said, 'But we didn't commit sedition.' It came out of me in such a childish way. The comrade major, he was a major - so I thought, the bigger the case, the higher the rank that's put on it - was waiting in a [Tatra] 603 with a driver, his subordinate, to bring me in. It didn't even occur to me that I should run and hide in the alleys somewhere. We just walked. I was scared, my soul shriveled, that a prune was a juicy peach compared to it. I had my soul hiding here behind this bone. Then we got to the apartment and the search began. They broke the bottom of the drawer, so everything fell out onto the floor. And they brought in an official from the national committee to testify that I was being treated decently."

  • "I sat down. I know I was afraid of what they were going to do to me. Fear of being among strange men in their car. And I didn't know where they were going to take me. We pulled away and this blond, red-haired, thin-lipped man turned around in front next to the driver and said, 'Do you know why you're here?' I said, 'No, I don't.' I was talking in a whisper, I wasn't able to speak up, so I just whispered that I didn't know. 'Because of your husband,' he said. And he turned back. We were driving and I didn't have the courage to ask who they were and where we were going. I just kept quiet. Something told me to keep quiet."

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When I was interrogated by the secret police, I was so afraid I whispered

Sylva Wernhartová with friends from Ladislav Ševčík's Folk Dance Ensemble in Ostrava, 1970s.
Sylva Wernhartová with friends from Ladislav Ševčík's Folk Dance Ensemble in Ostrava, 1970s.
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

She was born on 22 September 1939 in Orlova, Karviná region. Her father, Walter Hubert Šlachta, like other men from the area, had to enlist in the German army during World War II. The family had no information about him after the war. It was not until many years later that it was discovered that he had survived, but found a new wife in France and refused to return home. Sylva Wernhart graduated from high school, worked as a nurse for physical therapy and then at the Institute of Medical Cosmetology in Ostrava. Her husband, Zdeněk Wernhart, a doctor, was involved in smuggling banned printed materials during the totalitarian regime and was sentenced to ten months in prison. She was followed and interrogated by the State Security and her apartment was searched. She became friends with Jaromír Šavrda, an Ostrava dissident and signatory of Charter 77, and his wife Dolores Šavrdová. They shared a penchant for breeding exotic cats, which served as a cover for the dissemination of samizdat literature. She helped Jaromír Šavrda to escape the attention of the State Security. After her divorce from her husband, she lived alone and kept cats until she became seriously ill and had to move to the Korýtko senior citizens‘ home in Ostrava, where she lived in 2023, at the time of the interview.