Michaela Othmani

* 1967

  • "I remember one trip, Lbín somewhere near Litoměřice. Nobody knew where we were going. Nobody knew what, everybody was supposed to know only some part of it. The meeting was in Prague, at the end of the metro line C. We had a meeting not far from the zoo, I don't know how we got to Lbín. But we got to this camp, there was a kind of a cottage and cabins, and we were in the cottage there. We started making some plans, I really don't remember what was being planned. It was probably before the 28th of October, maybe they were planning what we were going to do on the 28th of October. We were in the cottage, we started heating, it was pretty cold. I came out and now I could see, it was such foggy, gloomy weather, and suddenly hundreds of policemen with white helmets were storming at us. It was a shock, they picked us up again and took us to Litoměřice for questioning."

  • "Then in January 1989 Palach´s week came." - "How do you remember it? Did you go there?" - "We were in Všetaty. We went..." - "That's what Jirka told me." - "I´ve just called him, he told me to talk about it, that he wasn't there. So he can't say anything about it. I remember very little of it. We arrived there by train and there were already a lot of policemen along the way from the train. We walked a few steps away when they started slamming us against a car. They grabbed me by hair from behind and started banging me against the car. I had my knitting with me, they started throwing with my bag. I told them, 'Stitches are going to run. Let the knitting be.' They were yelling at me that I was not allowed to knit. So they messed it all up. I had a snack in a jar, I was eating macrobiotics at the time, and they broke it. Then they picked us up and took us to a room where they were keeping us for a while. I don't remember exactly what was happening there, then they put us on a bus. They actually sent out several buses, dropping us off in different parts of the country in the middle of the fields. Always one person. They wanted us... my husband and I were there... they wanted us... they were kicking me out of the bus, and they kept him in the seat, saying that he wouldn't get off, that they would only drop me off. But the whole bus stood up against them and they let it be, they threw us both off."

  • "It was terrible that they rang at my door in the morning when I was supposed to go to work and picked me up. The offence of sedition. I was arrested for forty-eight hours for sedition. First they put me in a regular prison here in Liberec. There I had to undergo a body search, naked, I had to do squats, a woman warden searched me. They locked me in a cell, and after a while they came for me, took me in a car, then drove me to Jablonec. I had to undergo the same body search and they put me in a cell. After forty-eight hours they had to let me out, so they let me go. Public transport was interrupted and instead of a tram there was a bus to Liberec. They [policemen] let me get on the bus, but they were following me the whole time by car. In Proseč they overtook the bus, stopped it and got on the bus to pick me up. They picked me up for the next forty-eight hours for sedition."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Liberec, 02.07.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:12:15
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

As she walked out of the cottage, policemen in helmets stormed out of the fog

Michaela Othmani in 1987 with a king boa constrictor
Michaela Othmani in 1987 with a king boa constrictor
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Michaela Othmani was born on 28 December 1967 and lived in Chlumec nad Cidlinou until the age of eight. Her parents then moved to Dobříš and later to Prague. Her father was a rocker and Michaela went to concerts from the age of fourteen. She liked rock, metal and punk. She graduated from secondary telecommunication school and then she found a job in Liberec, she worked at many post offices. In 1987 she married Leoš Mayer, who worked in a machine workroom at the Liberec train station together with dissident Jiří Fajmon. In February 1988, the Mayers signed Charter 77 in the flat of Petr Uhl and Anna Šabatová. From August 1988 they participated in anti-totalitarian demonstrations, and in January 1989 they went to Všetaty to pay tribute to Jan Palach at his grave. They were arrested several times by State Security and spent time in a pre-trial detention cell. Michaela was saved from being fired from her job by Josef Pohlreich, then director of the Czechoslovak Post in Liberec. During the Velvet Revolution, the Mayers were in Liberec, Michaela was pregnant with a child and she and her husband were delivering Lidové noviny to households. After 1989, the couple withdrew from politics and joined the church. The Mayers had two children and they divorced later. Michaela married a second time, divorced again, and by 2021 she was living in Frýdlant, Bohemia, with her third husband. Her story could be recorded thanks to the support of the Statutory City of Liberec.