“I was in the fourth grade and I was lucky that I was ill with tonsillitis, so I was at home. I watched the events from my window. It was spontaneous. Suddenly, crowds of Skoda workers, dressed in overalls, poured in into the square. Mostly they were workers. They gathered in the square, someone spoke, I watched from the first floor. I wanted to be on the balcony but my grandma did not let me, first because I was ill but mainly because, as she said, ‘This will not end well. There will be shooting’. Well, so I was afraid. Then someone commanded, ‘We are going to the townhouse. We are going to the townhouse and we will show them!’ In a moment, I don’t know how long it took, busts fell from the townhouse. A young girl alway said something. They threw away busts, then some files. There was no plundering but people were so desperate or angry that they even went to the prison house in Dominikánská street and there they ransacked the whole archive.”
“My uncle came, then Mr Vobořil, and they brought many boxes and he organised it, Mr Vobořil, we were friends, as he was a kindred spirit. His family was moved out of their flat too, but only a week after us. Now he helped us. He was great. He was on first-name terms with my dad and he said, ‘You are not the first ones. I have helped several families already, I have some experience in it. No, you can’t do it like this, you have to put this here…’ And indeed, he organised it in such a way that when the soldiers arrived on the next day to move us out, we had everything packed. If we had not packed anything, it would have stayed in the flat. What worried me was that we had coal in our cellar. Coal was rationed then and we had no more ration. We had nothing for heating. Beyond my grandma’s garden they fell a forest and my dad used to go to collect the stumps. It was freezing in winter and whenever we had heating for two days, we were happy.”
“Some men were arrested rather shortly.” — “Yes, in the evening. My uncle was an engine driver at Skoda and he was an ardent communist. Really ardent. He wanted to remedy the situation, he was at the monument and was arrested. It was no use to him that he had wanted to calm down the crowds. Everybody could say that. Before he was identified, he lost four teeth. He was probably beaten. As a right communist, however, he never spoke about it. Only my aunt said he had arrived quite devastated.”
“When you went to the eleven-grade school and were in the last grade, there were problems again due to your bourgeois origin.” — “Well, you needed an assessment from the street committee. They knew everything, those people in the committee. There was this old woman and she was very keen on not to let through people who were not ardent supporters of the regime. They wrote an assessment of me, in which they put in everything about me, about my father. I was there shortly, I didn’t know anybody and greeted everybody in the house, but they described me as an arrogant, naughty girl. When our schoolmaster read it, that was it.” — “And what it meant for you?” — “I said I would not sit the school-leaving exam. What use was the exam when I couldn’t go on with my studies. My teacher even went to see my parents to talk me into it, saying that in due course I might get into some school. So my parents virtually begged me to sit the school leaving exam. I was not stubborn and I am happy for it. I passed the exam and went to work in a factory.”
“My mum was not at home at the time, she went to fetch some milk, and when she returned, me and my grandma were so happy, because it was something spontaneous, like a revolution. Then, I don’t know when exactly, sometime after lunch, the army arrived in the square.” “And you saw it?” — “Yes. I don’t have anybody to consult it with, but the soldiers did not stay long, they were driven away. The soldiers probably were in with the workers and their officers were not ready for it, and, you know, they need orders what to do and how. So they left and then the militia arrived. The demonstration was dispersed, then there was this accident at Masaryk’s monument, this I know only from hearsay. In the evening the militia arrived and occupied the whole square. Where they gathered them so quickly, I don’t know but the loyal ones probably arrived and they had guns. They said, I don’t know whether this was true, that there was a curfew. But no one went out and the militia men stood guard.”
“I didn’t sign it either. I excused myself, saying I didn’t know much about politics, but that I didn’t think it was right, that it was wrong actually. But perhaps I was saved by the fact that I didn’t understand it.” — “Did you lose your job?” — “I did, I did. I was transferred to another unit, me and a colleague of mine. But I was pregnant. They told me I had to leave. I gave them a certificate proving that I was pregnant, so they the compassion to put me into a smoking office, and I will never forgive this to my boss, with whom I was always on good terms, he was not a communist, but he tried so hard that he put me among the smokers. I never smoked, there was just a single smoking office, where those who had to smoke all the time, were located, and there they put me. I did the same work as before, only my board was moved into a neighbouring room. I said I was pregnant and didn’t feel well in the smoke but they said there was nothing in the Labour Code preventing a pregnant woman being in the same room with smokers.”
Anna Maňasová, née Zdráhalová, was born on October 31, 1942, in Pilsen into a family of the successful sport equipment manufacturer Josef Zdráhal and his wife Anna. Her father trained as a wheelwright and he built his firm from the scratch. Before the war they built a ski manufacturing plant in Černice, the shop was located in Pilsen, where they lived. They spent the war in Třemošná, as they felt safer there. After the war, her father purchased an apartment house with tenants in Pilsen, Republic Square, and had it rebuilt. In 1949, his company was nationalised by the communists and he had trouble to find a job in the Skoda factory as a painter of cranes. As their flat was of excessive size, according to the communists, a family of strangers was moved in. In 1953, following demonstrations against the monetary reform, the Zdráhals were moved, as a part of repressions, from their flat outside Pilsen. None of the family, however, took part in any demonstration. The Zdráhals moved again to Třemošná, where they stayed in a single room in dire conditions until 1961, when they were allowed to return back to Pilsen, to their already divided flat. Thanks to happy circumstances Anna could study at a secondary school, but due to her origin she was allowed to continue to university only when she obtained the “working class origin” by working in a factory. She studied Construction and Electrotechnical Faculty in Pilsen, specialising in nuclear energy, then worked, until her retirement, in the Skoda factory as a constructor and designer. In 1967 she married Bohumil Maňas and together they raised two children. In the 1990s they got their apartment house back as a part of the restitutions of property. Anna Maňasová died on September 24, 2022.
