Ivana Bočková

“I started attending the first grade, but the StB State Security did a house search in our home two weeks later. At first they led away dad, he was summoned to give some explanation, but basically he has not come back. In 1952 a tragedy occurred in Liberec when the StB entered our house. My mom was suffering from quite serious mental and psychic issues, and she was undergoing treatment for that. And my grandpa Antonín Strejček and aunt Marie Jurková were living with us together in that house and they all committed suicide. They took me with them. Then they took me to hospital and I was the only one whom they saved.”

“Something that surprises me greatly: my mom had been expelled from the Communist Party. They [she and father] were both prewar members of the Party. One of them was a member since 1931, the other since 1933. And in spite of all these insane experiences, when both of them were expelled, and their member’s cards had been returned to them after I don’t know how many years… After her death, they expelled my mother from the Party, and all the time he has been trying to annul the decision, and to make them revoke their annulment of her membership. I am absolutely not able to grasp this. If they do something to me, the Party does something to me, and in spite of that, he was even still trying to get back into the Party. I am absolutely not able to understand this. They had to have this insanely great conviction that the Party was a wonderful thing.”