"Because when we emigrated, we needed to take our documents with us. But if we had travelled as a family, with our little girl, it was clear that we would have been thoroughly searched at the border. So we came up with a trick that my parents would go to Yugoslavia two weeks before us, and when they came back we would leave our daughter with them and go on holiday with my husband. That was the public version. And we borrowed my parents' suitcase, which they used to take on holiday, to be able to take the documents out of the country. We tore off the lining, sewed all our papers inside, and returned the suitcase. My parents then went on holiday with it, unsuspecting. So our papers had been in Yugoslavia before we arrived. After my parents had left [Czechoslovakia], my husband and I packed our suitcases and followed them. My mother, when she saw us there with our daughter, it dawned on her immediately. And that was the first time I saw dad cry. We were there together for a week, which was a terrible week, because we didn't know where we would end up, where we would go, if we would ever see each other again, if my parents would see their granddaughter. Then dad asked if we had the documents and how we had taken them out. So we told them, we went over and ripped open their suitcases, and that's how we got all our documents. So in 1980 my husband and I emigrated."
"When dad was leaving Pardubice on 22 June, he and mum took a train to Řečany. He was a great sportsman, he lived and breathed the Sokol movement, so the only thing he took with him was the Sokol album, and he put it in a small suitcase with the cloth for suit. He went to the railway station with it, but because he didn't dare to travel with it any further, he left it in the left-luggage and threw the ticket away. Then when he came back after the war, he went to the left-luggage and asked for his suitcase. It was hidden under a shelf. Supposedly, when nobody came for it at that time, they opened it and when they saw that there was an album inside, they realized that somebody had hidden it there and they put the suitcase under the shelf. And it really stayed there until the end of the war. So that was the only thing he had left, the Sokol album which was so important to him. And I still have it to this day."
"So that my husband could open a private practice, he needed to have German citizenship. But when we wanted to obtain German citizenship, we had to give up Czech citizenship. And since here we were sentenced for leaving the republic illegally and for kidnapping our daughter, my husband to two and a half years [of prison] and me to two years, so my parents had to ask President Husák for a pardon. So my mum wrote to Husák, who pardoned us. They calculated a fine, how much money we had to pay back as an equivalent of school fees, for schools we went to here. And we also had to pay for our daughter who was here only for a year and a half, and we had to pay even for our son who was born in Germany."
"When I graduated from FAMU, even though I had previously worked in Czechoslovak Television, in music broadcasting department, there was an awful housing crisis, I had no place to live. I lived in various sublets and at friends. Even when I started to study at university, I went to study full-time to get a place at a hall of residence. But when I graduated, I again had no place to live in Prague. And it was a big problem having a job with no fixed working hours. Commuting was difficult, and since I already had known my current husband, I went back to Pardubice. I got a job at the cultural centre Dukla, but after a fortnight I learned at a meeting that they were counting on me joining the Communist Party. That same day I looked it up in the Labour Code and it said that if I terminated my employment within a month or so, I didn't have to state any reason. So I wrote the notice that evening and handed it in the next day without giving any reason. But at that time, you couldn't be out of work, you'd be considered a vagabond [a criminal offence at that time, trans.]. So I looked for work and found a job as an accountant at Restaurants and Bistros in Pardubice, so I used to go to restaurants and did inventory checks."
She was born on 29 March 1951 in Pardubice. Her father František Hovora supported the paratroopers of the Silver A group, escaped persecution after the assassination of Heydrich and was hiding until the end of the war. Because of his cooperation with the Western Resistance, Lenka‘s cadre profile was not very good. An assessment from a street committee ruined her dream of studying medicine. She left for Prague, where she later studied film production at Film and TV School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague [FAMU]. She could not find an apartment in Prague, so she returned to Pardubice after graduating from university. She found a job at the Culture Centre Dukla, but after two weeks she found out that she was expected to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. She immediately handed in her notice without stating any reason. She found a job as an accountant at the company Restaurants and Bistros [Restaurace a jídelny, RaJ] in Pardubice. She got married and daughter Tereza was born to Pěch spouses. In 1980 they decided to leave Czechoslovakia. They fled via Yugoslavia and Austria to the Federal Republic of Germany, where they settled after being granted asylum. They adopted German citizenship after giving up their Czech citizenship, and her husband opened a private practice as a doctor. Their son was born in Germany. They returned to live in the Czech Republic permanently in 2014.
