Ludmila Cibulková

* 1942

  • "[Dad] got 20 years. My mother then asked for a commutation of his sentence, but that did not happen. The lady [Marie] Ulman got twenty-five years. [Dad] served over eight years. In January 1952 he was arrested, in July we had to move out, and on September 19 there was a trial, so he got the twenty years. The trial was held in Prague, I wasn't there. My mother was there with my cousin because her mother, who was my aunt, was also on trial. And she lived through the whole detention in Pardubice until 1963. My father was in Valdice for the first year or so, which I remember as a child. I even confronted my brother, because he was older, so he remembered. So it was Valdice, it was a horrible building, just horrible. So we went there to see my dad. That was the first visit where we only saw his eyes. There was a wall between us, something like glass with a wire insert, and [only his eyes were] visible. Only my brother saw him when they were taking him away. I don't know... I hope I won't cry... [Brother] said [Dad] was completely devastated. Then he was in Pankrác, perhaps they were ruffling feathers there for the next years, then he got to Opava, where they used him because he was a construction engineer. He drew some plans [there], but he was not very happy, which my brother told me again. There were some conflicts there, probably more with the prisoners. Then they transferred him to Mírov, a fortress in Moravia, where I made these visits. I wasn't really a little girl then. When he came back, I was eighteen years old. I had my high school diploma..."

  • "I came out of school in Bolevec and there I used to recite [a poem at a school assembly]. I think I might have had a little bit of acting. There was an amateur theatre group where I acted. And sometimes there were people there who understood it, who maybe were already working for television at that time. They said I had quite a gene for it. I was quite good at acting and I enjoyed it. So when I applied to go to a junior acting school in Prague, it came very strictly that I shouldn't mention that I probably wouldn't get anywhere at all. That there would be a vote of the teachers at the school, if I could [go] to the construction industry school, which at that time had a requirement for children to apply for entrance exams there. So I ended up taking the entrance exam there, and since I was fifth in the whole [admissions] process, I ended up getting in. But I want to go back to that experience. There was a People's House [in Bolevec], which was then demolished as part of the communications, and in that People's House there were not only performances of that amateur theatre, but also various quite beautiful events from the school. There was a clever teacher there who knew how to put it all together. I once performed a poem there. It wasn't Majakovský, [I don't] remember, but it was definitely a Czech poet. And I guess I gave it so enthusiastically or so nicely, I don't know, I put in what I knew as a child, but immediately it came to the school from the local [košuteckých] and Bolevec communists that I, the child of an enemy of the socialist establishment, had something to present there and that it should never happen again."

  • "We had no idea. Mum probably had no idea that Dad would be capable of signing up for something like this at all, despite his dislike of the regime. Because he was of a terribly peaceful nature and therefore had no cells at all for such an activity. Nevertheless, on January 16, 1952, when I was nine years old, not yet ten, I was lying in my bed in the morning. In the kitchen where we slept, because it was quite cold in January, men in leather coats appeared, looking at me in my bed. There was a little radio above me, and they were looking at that too, to see what station might be on. And I caught one last glimpse, in my memories I have, of dad's loden coat in the hallway and then the slamming of the car door outside. The banging was quite distinct, because there weren't many cars before. And I didn't see my father again."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Plzeň, 19.04.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:56:00
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I was a little girl when my dad was taken away, when he came back I had graduated from high school.

Ludmila Cibulkova in 1958
Ludmila Cibulkova in 1958
zdroj: Archive of the witness

Ludmila Cibulková was born on 13 April 1942 in Pilsen to Emilia Kabátová, née Kunzendörferová, and Jan Kabát. His father worked as a technician at the Technical Offices of the Pilsen City Hall. Mum took care of the household, raising her daughter Ludmila and son Jan. Dad Jan Kabát and aunt Marie Ulmanová were members of Vasil Kosta‘s anti-communist resistance group, infiltrated by State Security. On 16 January 1952, they were arrested, and dad was sentenced to twenty years in prison for treason and espionage and deprived of all rights and property. In 1960, after eight and a half years, he was released on amnesty and soon died. Aunt Marie Ulmanová was sentenced to twenty-five years imprisonment, and spent her entire detention until 1963 in the prison in Pardubice. Her mother Emilie Kabátová was evicted to the parish in Všeruby. The children Ludmila and Jan were not allowed to study at university. Ludmila Cibulková, thanks to her diligence, got into the Secondary Industrial School of Construction in Pilsen, after graduating she joined the construction design department in Škoda factory. She was refused to study Civil Engineering at the Czech Technical University for cadre report reasons. For thirty-five years she worked in construction design, then she was employed as an investment officer at the Faculty of Education in Pilsen. After the merger with the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, she also worked as a project planner at the dean‘s office. In 1964, she married Antonín Cibulka and they raised a daughter and a son. At the time of filming in 2023, she and her husband lived in a restored house.