"I want to go back to that, to what happened with Milena Miřičková. Then there was the trial, she was interrogated, several times, she was even in custody, she was released again and interrogated again, and even the apartment was turned upside down, that was a really difficult time for her. And there was a trial. And they only invited to that trial those who told them what they wanted. But it was a few of us who went to her English class. And they convicted her on that basis. She went to prison in Opava, I don't know how long she was there, it wasn't long, but whether she was there for two years or a year, I don't remember. But she was in prison, and when she came back, or not yet, when the trial was over, she was at home and got the contents of the trial. On paper exactly who was there, who testified, what they testified to. And I went to visit her and nobody came there anymore because it was clear that it was almost a job. And she gave me the court transcript to read. And there I saw who was there and who had given them the nod on the charge that she was seditious and defaming the socialist establishment. I didn't want to believe my own eyes, but whoever admitted this and was at that point of agreeing to let her go to jail, that's reprehensible. And he wasn't a simple man not to know what he was talking about. It was several people who were educated, titled, and were friends with her, she was even in England with them at one time. And yet they nodded. But they were in a pretty high position, they would have gone for sure if they hadn't admitted it. So it ended up that several of the people that she taught English admitted that she was seditious, and on the basis of that she went to jail in Opava. And when she came back, I went to visit her. By then it had all died down a bit and she told me how it was in that prison. In the prison, the head of the Opava prison appreciated that she knew languages, so she translated all kinds of texts from other languages for him. She even met some of the women prisoners there who liked poetry, they did a Jaroslav Seifert evening there, they talked together and she said that when she was leaving, the head of the prison told her that he was very sorry that she was leaving, that she would not have such a co-worker anymore."
"It was before the eighties, anyway. I got a call from Director Pauch saying that the criminal police had come to pick me up, but I wasn't present, and that they were coming for me the next day to change my mind about why I was being summoned. So I changed my mind, and I thought right away that it was because of Milena Miřičková, because I knew that they had searched Milena's apartment - a completely ransacked apartment. The next day, at noon, I got a call from the director saying that I should come, that they had come for me. So they took me. In Strakonice, behind the police building, there's a kind of prison. It's individual cells, an annex, barred doors, barred windows. So there were already two of them waiting for me, facing each other, I was sitting between them, it was uncomfortable, really. They opened a big notebook, a book almost ten centimetres thick, and from that they read out to me what I was like, what somebody had said to me and so on. And the interesting thing is that they knew that I had a pen friend in Wimbledon, and I said, 'Yes, I had a pen friend, we corresponded, she was supposed to come ten years after the Russian invasion, but she didn't come because she was afraid, and then this investigation came about.' And they presented me with a photograph of a young woman, curly-haired, dark, and they asked who she was. And I said, 'I don't know, I've never seen her.' And they said, 'Don't tell us such tales, you've been corresponding with her for years.' And I said, 'Well, I'm glad you're showing me her, Denise Leged from Wimbledon, because she never sent me a photo and now I see she sent me a photo and you have it.' I sent her a photo of myself, but her photo never arrived, I didn't know what she looked like. I said, 'I don't know, I haven't seen her, I've corresponded with her, but I haven't seen a photo.'"
"So that was the forty-fifth year, which then ended with a joint parade of the American and Russian armies. Because in Blatná there was not only the American army, but also the Russian army, the Soviet Red Army, but because the demarcation line went around Blatná, the Americans were in the town and the Russians were just outside the town, today it's part of the town, on Malý vrch, where they had a broken camp. They had a fireplace there, tents, they sang, they played the garmos, it was also something wonderful. Well, it's hard for me to talk about it, because it's still alive... The American army and the Russian army or the Red army, they were totally different people. The Russians were not well dressed, they were dirty, they were dirty. The Americans looked absolutely nice, beautifully dressed, clean, smiling. In front of the school where they lived there are still three little parks with plants and trees, where they used to relax, box, play rugby, and even gave one of their boxing gloves to our family when they left. And the cards that they played with and played with us, they also left in the family. They are still in our family to this day. But the difference between the Red Army and the American Army was very noticeable, and when there was a parade of the two armies on the main street of Blatná, my parents and I were at that parade. I, as a child with a flower in my hand - my dad was holding me so I could see better - watched the whole parade and I still remember it. When the Americans marched, somebody went, excited that something bad was over. When the Russians went, one Russian soldier got separated and came up to me, and he unwrapped a metal from his breast pocket, which was wrapped in this dirty rag, and he was showing us the bravery award, and he took a flower from me and cried."
Vlastimila Pešková, née Trávníčková, was born on 21 November 1941 in Blatná. Her father, Adolf Trávníček, was a teacher in the Blatná town hall, her mother, Vlasta Trávníčková, was a housewife, and from the early 1950s she worked as an invoice clerk and accountant. In 1945, the demarcation line ran through Blatná, and the witness experienced American soldiers and Red Army soldiers. The witness‘s father was the Masaryk man, active in the resistance during the war. After 1948, the family had to move several times, and the father refused to join the Communist Party, so he was never given a directorship. She lived in Blatná until 1958, then she went to study biology and physical education at Charles University in Prague. She graduated in 1962, then completed her education in geology at the then J. E. Purkyně University in Brno. From 1963 she taught for 44 years at the grammar school in Strakonice. At the beginning of the 1980s, she was investigated by State Security Service (StB) in connection with her English teacher Milena Miřičková, a former employee at the American Embassy in Prague, who unsuccessfully tried to emigrate after 1948 and was imprisoned twice. In 2024, she lived in Strakonice and in Štítkov near Vimperk
