Zuzana Marešová

* 1932

  • "The main thing was that they wouldn't let me go. For the first time when [my daughter] emigrated, so of course they summoned me and asked how it had happened. And I said, 'I don't know, but as far as I know, it's her boyfriend's fault. I don't know. She didn't say anything about it. I didn't know beforehand. It's a bigger blow to me than it is to you.' Then they offered me the opportunity to go there on what they called a persuasion trip. That's what it was called. They called me to their office. I'll never forget that. They took me to the back room, and there were all these State Security and National Security Corps men there, and they said, they were on first name terms with me right away, they said, 'Look, we're going to give you an injection, and you're going to inject her, and she'll be conscious, but she won't know what she's doing.’ So I refused. I'm not going to inject my daughter with anything because I don't know if I'm going to hurt her. Still, they let me go on the persuasion trip. When I got there, I eventually explained to her how my sister felt in emigration. That it was actually terrible for her. That to this day, she has one foot at home and one foot in America. She said, 'Well, but I love him,' and then she said, 'Well, I'm going home with you.' Then he came to her, knelt down, begged her not to go. Unfortunately, she gave in to him, stayed there."

  • "After the war, my sister Dita and I were walking along Wenceslas Square one day and suddenly we heard a terrible bombing. We flung ourselves on the ground immediately and took normal positions like in London. Then we found out that the Alfa Cinema had a screen facing the street and a war film was on and in it they were dropping the bombs. So I said it was so natural for us but people were walking past us and tapping their foreheads."

  • "I didn't perceive anything at all except that one day my mum said we were going somewhere or I was going, I don't know. She showed me a book, a sort of a picture board book, with beautiful flowers in it. I loved colorful flowers so much when I was a kid. She was saying, well, where you go, these flowers are blooming there. Then I remember just at the station, when I was on the train."

  • "I used to throw away the firebombs from our garden with these two hands. But we did it kind of automatically. When I was in London I have experienced not only the ´blitzkrieg´, but also the V1 and V2 resistances. Everyone in Ealing must have had a shelter on his backyard. I know we have had one and also our neighbors. But they got hit straight into the shelter while they were in and they all died there. At that time mom took us out of the shelter and we spent few nights on our living room floor under the piano. The attacks during the ´Blitzkrieg´ were very intensive - three, four or even five air attacks during the night."

  • "My other memory is - I think it was at the dock or maybe it was some train station, I don´t know. All I know is that I got lost there again. But this time the place was so crowded that I really got lost there as a child. Later some organizer noticed me; we climbed together on some tower and because he had the speaking trumpet, he was calling out my name. These are sort of glimpses of what people remember, it´s not a lasting memory."

  • "Was ever someone blaming you for spending the war period in the West?" "Yes, all the time. Some people were joking about it, but the rest of them were blaming us for that. We even heard people saying: ´Other people were in concentration camp, but you´ve survived, you escaped´- we heard this quite often actually. "Was it manifested mainly in words?" "Yes. There were no other manifestations. My mother didn´t understand it at all. She was often taking a pride of England and we had to restrain her a little."

  • "When my father came back from the prison he closed himself to these impressions. He simply purposely stopped to perceive. He was doing his work, he was taking care of his family - but he forgot about all the other stuff just as if they would have beaten it out of him in jail. He acted like it never happened. He must have felt something though, but he never said a word about it. Unlike before the prison, when he often had a big mouth, now he never had again. He probably must have been very cautious."

  • "My father used to take me up on the roof where we watched the aircrafts fights. I still see it as it was yesterday. I see the allied aircrafts going against the German ones. It was always one heavy bomber and several English small spit fighters around him like wasps. Then we saw that something went on fire up there and then we saw the parachutes going down. They even had the headlights as a part of the anti-aircraft defense. They were searching through the sky and as soon as they spotted some German aircraft another lights were aimed at them in order to get the plane into cross position. Then the spit fighters began their attack."

  • "One of my friends asked me once for a favor. He had some friends - actually it was a married couple - from India coming to Prague for visit. And he asked me if I could take them for a sightseeing tour in Prague since he didn´t speak any English. I did what he wanted and I didn´t think about it anymore. Week later I was sitting in Bartolomějská street (the former StB office address - translator´s note). There were four men. And then it all began...´So tell us something about yourself.´ What a dumb questions! It took me two hours before I found out that it was all about this woman. I got so furious, I was screaming: ´C´mon, why didn´t you ask me about her right away? Do you have so much free time? ‘I was just so mad. I told them: ´ For God sake, tell me what you want.´ I still didn´t feel like I did something wrong. ´Have you been to some airport by any chance? ´ I told them that we haven´t and described them where exactly we were walking. They said: ´Do you know who were the people? ´ - ´Some friends of my friend.´ - ´It was the wife of Indian governor.´ - ´She didn´t tell me that.´"

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha 5 v bydlišti pamětnice, 30.05.2010

    (audio)
    délka: 02:24:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha 5 , 28.04.2015

    (audio)
    délka: 01:46:26
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 3

    Praha, 19.07.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:38:51
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 4

    Praha, 26.07.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:29:24
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th Century TV
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Going abroad these days means also to be allowed to come back. We should appreciate that.

Zuzana Marešová in 1939
Zuzana Marešová in 1939
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Zuzana Marešová, née Spitzerová, was born on 26 January 1932 in Prague into a religiously and ethnically mixed family. Her father Maxmilián Spitzer was a Czechoslovak Jew and her mother Pavla, née Kastlová, a Christian from Vienna. In the spring of 1939, her father travelled to England to set up a branch of his company. Her mother then managed to send all three daughters to England as well, in July 1939, by trains whose departures from Czechoslovakia was organized by Nicholas Winton. Later mother also went to England. Zuzana Marešová spent two and three-quarters years in England with a host family in Cornwall, later living with her parents in London and Wales, and for a time she studied at a boarding school. Her father worked in the chemical industry in England and was a Home Guard volunteer. In 1945, the whole family returned to Czechoslovakia, except for the eldest daughter who joined the US Army and served in Germany. In 1948 they considered emigrating to Argentina. In the 1950s, Zuzana Marešová‘s father was imprisoned for one year. In 1968, the witness pondered emigrating, but remained in Czechoslovakia. Because of her daughter‘s emigration in 1984 and visits from abroad, she was interrogated by State Security several times in the 1980s and was being persuaded to cooperate. Zuzana Marešová was living in Prague at the time of filming in 2022.