You were socialized with people who were on the same wavelength
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Anna Zavadilová (née Šimková) was born on 26 November 1954 in České Budějovice to Anna and Josef Šimek. Her parents were never members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Josef Šimek never made any secret of his anti-communist views and led his daughter to think in the same way. At the age of 14, she experienced the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops in Chotětín. In 1970, she entered grammar school. During the first year, students were offered to join the Socialist Youth Union (SSM). The first year most of them refused, the next year almost all of them joined the SSM. It was one of the unwritten conditions for applying to university. Anna Zavadilova did not join SSM. She also did not join the Union of Czechoslovak Friendship (SČSP) later on in her work. She was always consistent in her views, she did not want to have anything to do with the communists. After graduating from secondary school in 1974, she went straight to work and did not apply for university. She was not interested in studying at schools where many ideologically loaded subjects were compulsory and she suspected that she would not be allowed to study because of her open anti-regime attitudes. On March 30, 1974, she experienced the dispersal of a concert at the Amerika pub in Rudolfov near České Budějovice. Between 1974 and 1977, she and her group went on hiking trips and meetings, which were routinely broken up by members of the Publuic Security. Since 1982 she lived in the small village of Světlík, where she held the position of cattle keeper. In 1989 she actively participated in the Velvet Revolution. In Světlík they founded the Civic Forum. Most of the locals did not support the Velvet Revolution. After 1989, she ran various types of accommodation facilities and got close to the homeless people she started to care for. She rescued many people from the streets through her tireless work. Many of them were from the underground in České Budějovice. To this day (2024), she takes care of homeless people and accommodates them wherever she can. In 2024 Anna Zavadilová was living in České Budějovice.
