Mgr. Anna Grušová

* 1942

  • "On 21 August, when I woke up in the morning, we were living in Novodvorská Street, where there wasn't a phone, so I didn't know anything. I was getting ready for work. I turned on the radio to see what the weather was like, and suddenly I heard it. What a shock! I knew everything was wrong, and I imagined it was the 1950s all over again. But, as they say, the first time something is a tragedy and the second time it's a comedy. There's something to it. In the fifties they aimed for the throats and the estates, and this time it was basically just the estates."

  • "My mother had no friends in Jičín, so I was the only person she talked to about all her fears and doubts, even though I was only ten then. She didn't believe it, of course, and that was also because they had arrested several of her good friends who she was convinced had never done anything. She thought it was some kind of conspiracy in the party, with a certain section conspiring against another section. She couldn't explain it. Then there was the Slánský trial, which was broadcast on the radio. Everybody listened to it, and my father was there as a witness against Slánský. I remember thinking, 'He's not telling the truth! How is it possible that my father is not telling the truth?' He said that his father and mother had a pub in Orava that he went to a Hungarian grammar school. Such nonsense."

  • "We used to visit him. Once every six months. We were twice in Leopoldov and once in Jáchymov. In Leopoldov I remember especially the first visit. There was a huge gate and the visit took place in that dark gate. The wives were on one side, on the other side stood the prisoners in their uniforms and with their caps at their feet, with huge thick bars between them. It was a crazy sight, and behind each of the prisoners there was a guard standing. One of the prisoners was brought in on a stretcher, and his wife almost fainted. Then it turned out that there was some excellent surgeon locked in there, so they were all having their appendixes operated on. Then someone important was coming through, so we were herded to one side and the prisoners to the other. The car went through, the gate closed, and the visit continued."

  • "Someone rang the bell and it was a messenger from the Stalingrad Hotel. It was called Paris Hotel in the First Republic, Hamburg Hotel under the Germans and Stalingrad under the Communists. Then I think they called it Paris again. The messenger came to say that we had a phone call there. The post office was already closed and we thought that the Eislers, whom we used to go to, were calling us, but because my sister Helena was sick, we stayed in Jičín. We arrived at the hotel and suddenly it started snowing and it was snowing beautifully. In the hotel there was a phone booth with round glass. I saw my mother enter it, pick up the receiver and suddenly se started shaking it. She shouted, 'I can't hear anything'. She picked up the receiver and there she heard, 'Hello, Martinka.' That was absolutely unexpected."

  • "That was the end of 1952. In Jičín there is the so-called libosad, to which a long linden avenue leads. At the beginning of the linden avenue they erected a statue of Stalin and there was an opening ceremony, and I took part in that. It was just strange to me even then that there was a plaque in the plinth of the statue and it said that on the day the statue was unveiled, all the villages in the Jičín district established an agricultural cooperative. It was just strange to me and I thought, how did they manage to do it all in that one day? And then I remember that there was one house that had a smooth wall. And there was a quote by Vítězslav Nezval painted on the house to mark the occasion: "When all enmity is gone, then our children born in the sun will bless you, Stalin."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 12.02.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 01:47:48
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 23.07.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 01:10:37
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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There is a lingering distrust and aversion to anything foreign in our society

Anna Grušová in 1962
Anna Grušová in 1962
zdroj: archiv Anny Grušové

Anna Grušová was born on 7 January 1942 in Oxford. Her parents, Eduard and Marta Goldstücker, emigrated via Poland to Great Britain in 1939 to escape the Nazi threat. Eduard Goldstücker was already a well-known left-wing intellectual in the interwar period and he joined the Communist Party in 1936. His relatives were victims of the Holocaust. After the end of the Second World War, the family returned to Prague. From 1943 Eduard Goldstücker worked in the Foreign Ministry in exile, he was the first Czechoslovak ambassador to Israel in 1950-1951. After his return to Prague on 12 December 1951, he was arrested and in 1953 sentenced to life imprisonment in a mock trial of Foreign Ministry employees. Anna, her mother and younger sister Helena lived with their grandparents in Jičín. After Goldstücker‘s release from prison in December 1955, the whole family soon moved to Prague. After graduating from eleven-year-secondary school, Anna studied English and Swedish at the Charles University. During her studies she met Jiří Gruša, whom she married in 1962 and in following years she gave birth to a daughter Milena and a son Martin. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops, her parents emigrated to Great Britain and Jiří Gruša was prevented from literary activity for political reasons. In the early 1970s their marriage broke up. Political problems also affected Anna, who was subjected to professional discrimination until 1989 and did not escape the attention of the State Secret Police. Her son Martin died in 1989. After the fall of the communist regime, new professional opportunities opened up for Anna. She started translating and in 1993 she co-founded the Refugee Counselling Centre. In 2006, she was elected a representative of the Prague 5 Municipal District. She has a daughter Kristina from her second marriage to Josef Daniš.