Marta Pinke

* 1931

  • "Yes, we followed it, but we had a different approach to it. Because before any news came from Czechoslovakia, it was fourteen days. But of course we followed it, all sorts of things. Different magazines, what was there about the Czech Republic. In Paris they used to publish, it was in French, they used to publish news about Czech too. But yeah, they got the news, they did. Not right away, maybe in a week or something like that."

  • "They approved it because my father had so many problems with the socialist regime here in the Czech Republic, so he wouldn't have gone. I felt very bad that I left. But my father said, 'If you have the chance, girl, go. Go for it.' They were all alone here then, and it weighed down my life."

  • "It was pretty bad there, in Traiskirchen. There were Hungarians and Poles and they were different from us. That's a nice way of putting it. And men, women, children, everything together. Well, we were there for ten days and then we were rushed off somewhere else to make room for the next batch. So we're still with one of our friends, no kids either, so they put us in the same one. And it was a former mansion. And it was nice, regular food, clean. And we actually had the day off, we didn't have a program. So we would meet in different ways or we would play cards and we would wait for those ten days before they would take us further, across the sea."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha, 09.11.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:22:09
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I would never let him go into exile alone

Marta Pinke, née Křivanová, circa 1946
Marta Pinke, née Křivanová, circa 1946
zdroj: archive of a witness

Marta Pinke, née Křivanová, was born on 2 April 1931 in Prague, Žižkov. Her father, Otakar, was a small businessman, very enterprising, who managed to run a fish salad shop during the war, despite food ration cards. After 1948, however, his business was nationalized and he was forced to go to work in the mines. Marta Pinke, after graduating from the burgher school, started an apprenticeship in a music shop. In 1960 she met former political prisoner Karel Pinke, who had just been released under the amnesty of President Antonín Novotný. Karel Pinke was arrested in 1950 together with his wife Milada Pinke and brother Miroslav Pinke for espionage activities and contact with the British secret service agent Jan Brejcha. He was given fourteen years, of which he served „only“ ten thanks to an amnesty. In 1952, he cooperated with State Security for a few months and was placed in a remand prison, but soon ended his cooperation due to a nervous breakdown. As a political prisoner, he then worked in the worst conditions in the uranium mines in the Jáchymov and Příbram regions. His wife divorced him, he was seriously injured twice and for the last two years he was treated for open tuberculosis in Bory. He was released in 1960 at the age of forty-one. Marta and Karel Pinke married in 1960 after a short acquaintance. They welcomed the Prague Spring of 1968 with great joy, and Karel Pinke became a member of the newly established K-231 Club of former political prisoners. When the Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia on 21 August, he feared further imprisonment and decided to emigrate. His wife stood faithfully by his side. In August, the Pinke‘s left for Vienna, where they waited in the Traiskirchen refugee camp for several weeks before their turn came in December and they were finally able to fly to Canada. In Ottawa, they gradually built a new life for themselves and became involved in local country clubs; Karel Pinke became mayor of the Ottawa Sokol and a member of the Sokol County of Canada. In the 1970s their citizenship was revoked and they were convicted in absentia for leaving the country. When the Velvet Revolution came to Czechoslovakia in 1989, Karel Pinke did not believe in regime change for long. It took a full ten years for the Pinke family to return to their homeland. After thirty-one years in exile, they settled in Prague again in 1999. Karel Pinke died after a long illness on 14 October 2007. For his meritorious work in Canada he was awarded the Miroslav Tyrš Medal and the Masaryk Award. Marta Pinke was living in her apartment in Prague‘s Vinohrady district at the time of filming (in 2023).