Libuše Břenková

* 1931

  • "The management had to establish a partnership. This was ordered from above, so such a companionship was established with the crew. Every now and then officers from Květná, which is not far from Svitavy, would come to the company. I remember one time we had a company meeting at the end of the year and the generals had the whole table occupied. They were quite unpleasant, a bit of a lecher." - "Did they dare to touch women?" - "Yes. We left quietly afterwards."

  • "There was a clear question: 'Do you agree or disagree with the entry of troops?' One comrade started shouting at me, as I imagine, that I didn't agree. They assumed that I must agree at all costs; that everyone should agree. In retrospect, looking back on it, it was something terrible. Such a brain blackout." - "Did you get stuck?" - "I didn't. I was determined to get out, but I wondered what it would be like with my husband." - "So you decided to take it back?" - "I didn't even make the effort, but the chairman of the party organization at the company contributed. He sort of stood up for me, and I let myself be carried along on that wave and let it go. We dealt with it at home and with my husband. He didn't know what to do about it either."

  • "Dad was a farmer and quite fond of going barefoot to work. One day, out of the blue, a black car came for him. They picked him up and took him to Bystré - it's a central town. There was a headquarters there. They picked him up barefoot and interrogated him. When the grain was being handed in, a report came on him that they had found sawdust in it. That's a pest, a beetle that multiplies in the grain. Someone told dad it was from him. They loaded him barefoot and took him to Bystré, but he had to walk back."

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    Hostivice, 14.11.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:02:32
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I disagreed with the Soviet occupation. They yelled at me, asking how I imagined it

Libuše Břenková, 2023
Libuše Břenková, 2023
zdroj: Post Bellum

Libuše Břenková, née Kopecká, was born on 11 December 1931 in Svojanov as the third child of four. Her parents Ladislav and Marie were private farmers. She spent her childhood in Manova Lhota, where her family moved around 1933. During World War II she lived for about two years in Chrast near Poříčany with her grandparents Lambert. In the 1950s, her parents were forced to join the JZD (Unified agriculture cooperative). She attended a social health school in Prague-Holešovice, but she left early and after a six-month course as a medical assistant she joined the Vigona factory in Svitavy in 1950 as an assistant to the company doctor. In Svitavy she joined the Vigona choir and met her future husband Josef Břenek, an agronomist. They settled in Svitavy. They married in 1956 and had two children, a son in 1957 and a daughter in 1965. In the 1960s Libuše Břenková studied at evening at the secondary school of economics, but in the third year, after the birth of her daughter, she dropped out. She then worked at Vigona in the accounting and personnel department. After the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, she was determined to leave the Communist Party, but did not do so in order to minimise the negative consequences for her family. Her husband worked as director of the district and regional agricultural administration and in the 1980s also at the Ministry of Agriculture in Prague. Her son Jiří Břenek, a composer, violinist and founding member of the band Čechomor, died in 1996. Libuše then devoted her care to her surviving grandchildren. In his old age, her husband successfully devoted himself to artistic woodcarving. Libuše Břenková was widowed in 2009 and since 2020 she has been living in a nursing home in Hostivice.