• Politician’s Mom

    This interview takes place in one of Prague’s most famous cafés.  Mrs. D. and I find a place away from the window tables occupied by tourists, speaking many different languages.  I remember the times of my youth here.  During the years of Stalinism, one would turn when hearing someone speaking a foreign language.  Now it is almost the reverse.

  • The Fighter

    From Mrs. P’s letter I am aware that she is afraid to travel.  She is waiting in front her apartment building.  Her manner of speech is rapid.  She acts hurried.  We climb four flights of stairs to her apartment. 

  • Two Sisters – Mrs. J.

    Miss. S. leaves the room and comes back with her younger sister Mrs. J. The three of us chitchat for a few moments. I reassure them what matters are their individual views on the events, rather than whether their stories match. The older sister leaves the room and the younger sister and I sit at the opposite sides […]

  • After her arrest, Miluška Havlůjová did not see her baby for 2 years

    Miluška Havlůjová (Pomplová) was born into a patriotic Czech family in 1929. She was a fashion model and she also worked as an office clerk. Her parents joined the resistance movement in their area of Rožmitál pod Třemšínem during the WWII German occupation of Czechoslovakia. Her mother was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, but miraculously survived in […]

  • They Called her a Kulak

    Mrs. G. waits for me at the railway station of her beautifully renovated holiday resort town. We agreed that I would recognize her by a white envelope in her hand. I knew about some of her experiences from her letter she sent after reading my advertisement in the newsletter. I am not sure why but I have a hard time not […]

  • The Director’s Daughter

          When I searched for daughters of political prisoners, willing to talk about their experiences, one of the criteria was age 5—12 during the 1950s. Mrs. K. responded with a letter stating, “… I would like to participate even though I am older than the requested elementary school age.  My father was imprisoned for 5 years from 1949 to 1954 in Leopoldov, Ruzyn, at the end in […]

  • Fairytale Story

    When Mrs. O. arrives at the hotel, she orders salad with a comment, “I’ve got to lose some weight.” She suggests she will begin with her childhood, informing me “What I am going to tell you is what I heard from my grandma. I don’t remember because I was a baby when my dad, as a forester, found a wounded man who was shot by […]

  • Daddy’s Defender

    After Mrs. H. read about this inquiry in the political prisoners organization’s newsletter, she offered to participate with a letter that reflected her skepticism on anyone willing to hear their voice. In her opinion, few parents who have a daughter of the required age for this study are still alive. Only a few widows and their daughters are members of the […]

  • One memory – one life

    I would like to show how one memory in life might become the meaning of life.  It was Christmas 1951 in Prague when my father was arrested and imprisoned.  I was born two moths premature in February 1952. After spending three month in hospital in incubator with lung infection, my mother has taken me to her mother, my grandma in Ceske […]

  • The Nasty Grandmother

    Mrs. L. lives in a Moravian industrial city considered for decades the steel heart of the country, a dirty and inhospitable place. In the post-communist era it has 23% unemployment rate by some estimates, and a strong communist base, still an active party in the Czech Republic. During the short taxi ride from the train station to the hotel […]


Some of us participated in research on the psychological effects on children in families persecuted by the communist regime. There were originally twelve of us (in 1999). Thus a group of women was formed, which has grown over time to sixty members (2008). We meet twice a year, and many of us have become friends.