Hana Plicková

* 1961

  • "I went to grammar school, so we had a female professor, and she was a hard-core communist. And, she said one time, it was supposed to be Christmas vacation, and she said that on the 24th December at midnight, she went to church, and she said: 'I forbid you to go to the church mass. I'll keep an eye on it, and whoever I see there at midnight will have huge problems and may also be expelled from school.' So, we went there as a whole class. Because as soon as something like that happens, at that moment a person... something in him rebels and says to himself, not like this, they will not simply dictate to me what I should think and what opinion I should have."

  • "In college, my friend and I went to a concert in Karlovy Vary. It was a concert of the band named Pražský výběr. At that time this particular band bothered them as their singer was Mr. Kocáb. I don't know how this music could have been toxic when it was just music for young people, classical rock. Well, that time we went to Karlovy Vary with that friend. Well, when the concert ended, we went [with the others] to the station and back to school in Ústí nad Labem. And at that moment they let us get on that train and really surrounded every entrance, just so that no one could get out, so people from the police... and they were there with dogs. This means that no one can escape from that train. With the fact that they went wagon after wagon and asked us to show our IDs. Back then, there was no way anyone could get out without an ID card. That means we had to have it, it was simply a crime to go out without any ID. So they legitimized us and I remember and it made me sad at the time that they wanted to know who was at that concert. And with the fact that, of course, I was in college, when they did it, they said that we would have problems at school. And that one girl, a stranger, who was in that wagon, said: 'I won't give you the ID card, I don't have it.' And the policeman began to cry at her loudly. ' Why are you yelling at her, what are you doing?' And he said to her: 'You cow, stupid cow, what are you doing here...!' And he took her by the hair, they pulled her out of that wagon, and there they threatened her he'll beat her up if she didn't shut up. And if she didn't like it, she could go to jail too, and so on. And of course she would have problems at school and the so on and so forth. So I remember that to this day and it was something terrible, because I thought to myself, we are going out to get culture, to listen to a concert, and it is, as I say, for them it was something like anti-state. They just treated us that way, and we were mostly young people that means around fifteen years old, I don't know, just normal young people who were just looking for culture."

  • „At that time, I was with my grandmother. It was in Dolní Jiřetín, that town, the town, no longer exists today, because today they are mines, the mines got priority. And we were there with my brother, who is seven years older. And I remember it because it was quite a shock. Grandma woke us up in the early, early hours of the morning, around four o'clock in the morning, saying, 'Children, hold on, there's going to be a war.' She had a huge fear in her eyes. And then I know I felt sorry for her because she almost cried. And we went to look out the window and grandma said she was scared because she didn't know what was going on. And one tank after another drove down the road. And when I looked at the sky, it was like blowing up a dandelion, there were a lot of parachutists, just a lot of parachutes. The sky was really covered with them, so it was quite the experience of the day, you might say.“

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Jirkov, 23.11.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 26:06
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Normalization was an education in hypocrisy

Hana Plicková (en)
Hana Plicková (en)
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Hana Plicková, née Čermáková, was born on January 18, 1961 in Chomutov. During the invasion in August 1968, she and her brother were spending their holidays at their grandmother‘s in Dolní Jiřetín. Grandma woke them up with great fear in the early hours of the morning and together they watched the passing tanks. After matriculation, she joined the Faculty of Education of Jan Evangelista Purkyně University and studied Russian and geography. At that time, she also took part in a concert performed by the band called Pražský výběr in Karlovy Vary. On the return journey by train, they issued an ID card for each passenger. When her classmate stood up for another girl who did not have an ID card, she received very rough treatment from the police. After her studies, she started as a teacher at an elementary school in Jirkov. When teaching, she was particularly bothered by how history was twisted and children were lied to. She experienced the Velvet Revolution with enthusiasm and the expectation of great changes. In 2022, she lived in Jirkov.