Jana Vydrová

“What was interesting – I’ve been told this by my grandmother - that when they were opening the first tram line from Letna to the Exhibition Grounds in Prague, his colleague told him, ‘Boss, it won’t work, it will be a scandal.’ But my great grandfather told them in his authoritative voice, ‘Don’t be afraid, it’ll work.’ I know nothing about these things, I can just insert a cable into a socket, but I think that he believed in what he did. For me, he was a great person and a real Czech patriot, who did everything he could for the Czech nation, even when it was not to his benefit. Even Edison had a factory built for him in America. And it is interesting that Edison was born in the same year as my great grandfather. Whether this was a constellation in the sky, I don’t know. But he refused, saying he was a Czech.”

“The wave of people who arrived in 1948, these were the highest quality people, who had some foreign experience. All I met were highly valuable, hard-working and they appreciated freedom. It continued for some time, even when we arrived in 1964. That was the group. But in 1968, when there was this surge of emigration, the group of migrants was fairly disparate. Many of those people who were leaving Czechoslovakia had an experience working with the communist regime. It was much on the university level. After 1970, many – I am not saying all – arrived for economic purposes and I would say that their number kept increasing. Many of them had no principal political ideas.”

“My mother suffered a lot when I was sacked of the foreign trade business. I cried and it really hurt. Not only that they sacked me, but they refused to provide any reference for me.” The Interviewer, “How did they explain it to you?” – “Because of bourgeois background. This is what they told me. It was in 1961. They called me, saying they could not send me to Switzerland to the trade department. ‘We are sorry to inform you, comrade, that you also have to leave our foreign trade company completely.’”

“Naturally, when we didn’t return, both my parents were interrogated. My father took it hard, they were interrogated at the Ruzyně prison, independently. First they took in my father, then my mother. My father later recalled that when my mother went it, she was in a conspicuously good mood. My father later said, ‘I was sitting there and suddenly your mum walks out of the door like a Valkyrie. They reproached my mother for me fleeing the country. But my mother turned the situation round, saying, ‘You won’t be telling me anything, I will say something to you, ‘You did everything so that I would lose my daughter. You sacked her from her job, you didn’t give her a chance. Everything you did to her returns… but not to you but to us.’ My father said my mother was in a fighting mood. I am certain that my father didn’t tell them this. He listened to them, they dominated, but my mum said, politely but truthfully, what I have just said.”