The communists broke down my dad, I hated them
Olga Handlová was born on February 5, 1934. She grew up with her parents and two sisters in Rychnov nad Kněžnou, where they owned a picturesque house. Her father, Jaroslav Handl, was the head of surgery in Ústí nad Orlicí, but after the February coup in 1948, he did not hide his antipathy towards the new communist regime. Subsequently, he had to change workplaces many times, and after long months of physical and mental exhaustion, he died of a stroke. In 1952, Olga Handlová and her mother sold the house in Rychnov and moved to Spořilov in Prague. The witness wanted to study at AMU, she successfully passed the entrance exams, but was not accepted due to staffing reasons. After that, she changed a number of professions, for example, she worked as a food manager in the Kotva department store. Later, she married her classmate Ivo Včelák, who was one of the Holy Spirit children whose parents were executed during the Heydrich period for helping the paratroopers. During the November Revolution in 1989, she was on National Avenue, despite having a broken leg. In the 1990s, she ran unsuccessfully for the Parliament of the Czech Republic. In 2002, she met Václav Havel, who personally thanked her for her help during the floods in Moravia. In 2023, she lived in a retirement home in Prague.