Ivana Jeništová

* 1947

  • "I was in the street with children and suddenly I see him coming towards me. It was a dream completely, I thought I was going to faint with joy, I was holding the bike - and now I see him - and I completely started to shiver. He came, so I jumped on him, I was still holding on to him. Then it was difficult because they wouldn't take him to work anywhere, no money, yet there was a work obligation. He had to work, or he'd have been locked up again, so he and my mother were trying to get him a job. Then he got a job as a worker in a small factory in the next village."

  • "It was in 1952, two months after their wedding. We were only in Vyškov for a short time, my stepfather had two more friends, they went to a pub and there they joked and said they were going to run away to the West - and the third friend went to turn them in. And then they picked up the two of them. I know that after that we were summoned to the commander, me and my mother, my father was already in prison, he was detained before the trial. We went to the commander's office, there was a big desk and there was something covered with a tarpaulin. The commander said to my mother: 'You know what's under there, don't you?' My mother said no. He lifted up the cell, and there were grenades and all kinds of weapons. He told mom that they wanted to take it all with them. I'd like to see how they'd haul it. Well, they just locked him up, there was a trial and he got eight years. They sent him to Jáchymov, which was completely stupid, but in those days, they arrested people for everything."

  • "I remember my mother telling me how the uprising was over and those who used to raise their hands went to the streets. The youth, such hulks, and suddenly they were terribly convinced resistance fighters and were burning Germans on the lamps. They took them out of their flats, and there was this withered, dry old man who was led around because he was German. My mother said she was walking down the street and there was a dead German lying there burned, she touched him by her foot and she said she remembered his flesh shaking as he was burned, I don't know how she managed it."

  • "Then it was August, we were visiting, someone had a birthday. We were living in Rychvald, a village just outside Ostrava, and we were about to go to sleep, and suddenly the friends we came from called us and said: 'There's a terrible noise, some tanks are coming.' And I said: Come on, what are you fooling about, it's nothing.' Before that, my uncle and I were on a motorcycle trip where there was a military exercise and it was making a noise at night. This was so much the same, so I said, I guess it's a drill, don't fuss about it. But by morning they started saying it on the radio, so we were watching and listening. And in the morning the tanks were still going. We went to work, and I just had an appointment that day with my doctor, my gynaecologist, who told me that we were going to have a baby. So, imagine the feeling when the war starts - and he announces that you're going to have your first child."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Olomouc, 24.02.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:02:08
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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    Olomouc, 26.02.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:48:48
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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Life should be simple, then it can be beautiful, we don‘t need millions

Ivana Jeništová during recording for Memory of Nations, 24 February 2022, Olomouc
Ivana Jeništová during recording for Memory of Nations, 24 February 2022, Olomouc
zdroj: Paměť národa

Ivana Jeništová, née Pírníková, born on 5 December 1947 in Prague to parents Karel Pírník and Jiřina Pírníková, née Havlíčková. Her father was a soloist at the National Theatre in Prague, her mother worked in the library and as a worker. Her maternal grandfather, Věnceslav Havlíček, was a writer and educator of Sokol. After the establishment of the Slovak state, he and his family had to leave Bratislava for Prague. As a former Sokol, he was followed by the State Security. After her parents divorced, Ivana lived alternately in Slovakia and Prague. She graduated from the Secondary Industrial School of Graphic Arts in Bratislava. She devoted herself to tramping. She lived with her first husband Rudolf Grym in Ostrava, in the tramp settlement Bílý Blizzard, and was editor of the magazine Tramp. In 1972 she moved to Olomouc. During the normalization period she participated in secret meetings of Christians in Olomouc, they organized camps for children. She worked at Moravské tiskařské závody, after the revolution as editor of the Olomouc newspaper Hanácké noviny, correspondent for Radio Free Europe, manager of the restaurant U Jeništů, then as editor of Moravskoslezský DEN, press spokesperson for the Archdiocesan Charity Olomouc and editor of the Katolický týdeník. She and her husband Lubomír raised four children. In 2022 she lived in Olomouc.