Hana Tížková

* 1935

  • “I didn’t even have any problems at work anymore. Only that my husband, who’d studied mining, he was employed at Agrostroj. The job of the head metallurgist was attained by a person who hadn’t even studied technical school, but my husband couldn’t get the job because they’d seen us on visits to Valdice. And when I was at the laboratory and I needed things from the vault which had to be unlocked using three keys, one was with the lead metallurgist, the second with the head of the lab, and the third was with the head of the staffing department. And he told me that he wouldn’t give me any keys because I was untrustworthy and it’d be possible for me to take some poison from the vault and throw it into the cistern and poison the entire population of Jičín.”

  • “It’s hard to forget my visit to Pankrác, where we went with Mom right after the trial. And there next to these enormous gates and wide stairs there was a woman crying. Mom asked her what had happened, if we could help her somehow. She answered saying that her husband, an officer, had been sentenced to death by a military court. That she had gotten a letter to come say goodbye to him. She was from Slovakia, had young kids at home. She said: ‘Before I had gotten everything arranged to come to Prague, I got here, went there, only to find out that he was executed yesterday.“

  • “It was the Kámen (Stone) Action, named for the stones near the border, first tested in Russia as it had been tried out there beforehand. The trafficker told Dad that they were at the border and now German customs officers would come and take him to the customs office. And then the foulest thing that can happen in these situations happened. They had normal customs officers there who were like America soldiers, listening to jazz, who offered him whiskey and chocolate. They tried to make everything look American and people were convinced that they had really managed to make it across the border. Dad even sent us a letter saying: ‘Girls, it all worked out, I’m in Germany, more soon.’ By then he was already sitting in Pankrác (Prison).”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Jičín, 19.01.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 49:34
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

They suspected that the daughter of a political prisoner might be able to poison the city

Hana Tížková, 1945-1948
Hana Tížková, 1945-1948
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Hana Tížková, née Procházková, was born on 2 January in the foothills of the Orlický Mountains to a family of school teachers. Her father Karel Procházek was nearly arrested by the Gestapo for being denounced but luckily everything was explained in time for him to avoid it. As a child, right before the war ended, she witnessed an elderly German being beaten to death. After February 1948, her father, a functionary of the People’s Party, a member of Junák and Orel, lost his position as a high school teacher and then worked paving roads; hence, his decision to emigrate, which, however, ended up with him being arrested, going through a show trial, and being ultimately sentenced to life in prison after being caught attempting to cross the border and after falling into a trap by the State Security (during the so-called Kámen (Stone) Action). The family long bore the brunt of being branded the family of a political prisoner. Thankfully, at the beginning of the 1960s, there was an amnesty of political prisoners and Karel Procházka was able to return home after thirteen years. Hana at the time had already trained as a laboratory assistant, was married, and pregnant with her second child. She bore the mark of being the daughter of a political prison, however, also in the years that followed.