Jana Marco

* 1966

  • "We met at Vinohrady, I don't remember who, and we walked down from Vinohrady to Wenceslas Square. We laid flowers there, but even then we were being followed by State Security, both civilian and armed uniformed forces. It was a bit of a shove. We laid the flowers [at the statue of St. Wenceslas], the chain was there just like it is now. They took the flowers, gave them back to us and withdrew again. We took the flowers again and put them there again, like that, about three times, until they got angry and said, 'That's it, we're finished.' But while this was going on, which could have lasted about three and a quarter hours, more people started to follow. They started to crowd around and watch what was happening, and they shouted at the policemen: 'Let them go!' and 'Let them put the flowers there!' They already started like messing with us and there was a crowd gathering around. This was up by the Food House, there were police cars parked perpendicular to the sidewalk. They were putting us in those cars and there people spontaneously started chanting 'Let them go!' 'Let them go!' 'We want freedom!' and slogans like that."

  • "As I told you before, my friends trained me for these interrogations... It was that you either have the option of keeping quiet and not actually saying anything, which is quite difficult for a long time. When you've got a few experienced adults sitting around you, there's a risk that you'll just blurt it out or you won't be able to stand it or something like that. The other method was to find a topic of your own and talk freely about it, to release the emotion, to release the tension, so that you could communicate but know that you hadn't made any mistakes. The third method, the one that everybody recommended not to use, was the 'answer but never say anything specific' method. I think it's easy to get caught up in that and you could maybe trip or hurt somebody, you don't even know. The cops just pull some information out of him and he's not even aware of it. So I've always chosen the second method, and that's that I find my own topic and I talk about it freely. They were a little bit like in a stroke, but they couldn't do anything with me."

  • "I came to this definition against the regime and to some activities of my own through literature, through culture and through music, because I said to myself at the age of sixteen or seventeen, and I remember a specific idea that was in me and it has stuck with me to this day: 'Well, I'm not going to be here for the rest of my life listening to Karel Gott and Helena Vondráčková and reading some books that somebody will allow me to read when there are far greater opportunities for both literature and music. And I want to learn more and I want to read more and I want to listen to more.' That in itself defined me against the regime, because the regime didn't allow me to do that." - "So it was through cultural things?" - "Actually it was through cultural things. That's how I got into it, through the Jazz Section."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha, 14.02.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:19:42
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
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    Praha, 17.05.2022

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    délka: 01:01:30
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
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She just wanted to lay flowers. She got nine months bluntly

Jana Marco in 1985
Jana Marco in 1985
zdroj: Archive of the witness

Jana Marco, née Pacholíková, was born on 16 September 1966 in Šternberk, but she has lived in Prague since childhood. Her mother worked as a researcher, her father as a civil engineer. Both were expelled from the party in 1968, which condemned them to work in ordinary jobs. As a teenager she was drawn to Western culture and at nineteen became a member of the Jazz Section. She stood up for its leadership when the regime began to persecute the group in the second half of the 1980s. She stood at the birth of the Independent Peace Association and spoke on its behalf at a demonstration on Škroup Square in 1988. She was arrested during Palach Week. She was sentenced to nine months, of which she eventually served six. After her release, she signed the petition Several Sentences and, under her then name Jana Petrová, the Declaration of Charter 77. She was instrumental in the founding of the Civic Forum, for which she was also a deputy after the revolution. Later she was also a deputy for the ODS party, for which she was also a spokesperson. She retired from politics in 1998. She chaired the Council of the National Library for several years and was also chairman of the Board of Trustees of the National Gallery Foundation. In 2022 she lived in Prague and worked at the PR agency PAN Solutions.