The documentaries Children of Stalinism for Czech TV depict the consequences on these children of their parents’ imprisonment. The following is a commentary on two opposing points of view.
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…
My beloved mother, my dear children (his wife, father and brothers were in prison at the time, being tortured by interrogators), On 1/29/1955 the Supreme Court sentenced me to death. My dear mother, my dear children, I think about you all the time. I think about Lidunka (his wife), dad and my brothers. I love you all more than…
Helena Goldstuckerova — Vavrova What is your most pleasant memory from childhood? There are many until they arrested dad. The best one was when he returned home, and we had our first Christmas together. What do you think was the worst moment? The worst was, (long pause) when they imprisoned daddy. I was four and a half and…
Or — every story has its prologue. The story of our family, persecuted during the communist era, is like a story of thousands of individuals and their families. The prologue of those family tragedies goes back to the 1930s when our future communist president Gottwald said in the Parliament, „ We Communists go to Moscow to learn how to break…
I was born into a family that hid in different locations in Slovakia during World War II. My parents succeeded hiding with their little girl thanks to false documents showing they were not Jewish. But in 1943, someone informed on them and they were deported to the Terezienstadt concentration camp. When the war was over, the return home was not a happy one.…
Ivan Margolius On returning to Prague I imagined I had seen my father. His slim figure, elegantly dressed in a dark single-breasted suit, white shirt and blue tie appeared in the distance. He paused at Knihy bookshop in Na Příkopě Street to look inside and check his reflection in the shop window. His hair was swept back, the receding hairline…
