Tatjana Dohnalová

* 1950

  • “We already had Kateřina. In kindergarten they were told bullshit so we tried to steer her in another direction. Fortunately we had a recorder and many recordings from the 1960s, as my husband recorded both music and literary shows. We left out TV completely, radio as well and we lived by listening to our tape recorder. We listened to Kryl and singers we had on recordings. And then we actually started meeting people around the dissent, albeit warily at first, including Pavel Rychetský. But after Charter it gathered momentum. We were happy to be surrounded by people who thought in the same way as we did.”

  • “It was still compulsory to take part at the general election so you needed some courage not to go there. Now it looks terribly simple but back then it seemed impossible to us. Even if we considered it. I don’t know really, I would say one had to grew up to it, because then you learned about all that dirt. There was the trial with the Plastic People of the Universe. And it was too much. Because the Voice of America — we couldn’t listen to Free Europe but could listen to Voice of America, so we listened to Voice of America and learned everything from there. It sort of grew in us, we felt it was too much. When Charter appeared, followed by the hysterical reaction against it — “traitors and renegades” — this was the moment. I knew one of the renegades, Pavel Rychetský, in person. So it made me very angry, and my husband was angry too. Then we took part in full.”

  • “I was on maternity leave at that time so I had, relatively, a lot of time. I wrote during the day and then at night when children went to sleep. After my maternity leave, when I started working again, I wrote only in the evenings or at night, depending on how much time I had or, sometimes, how urgent it was. Later I took the information on Charter 77 which I copied — in the latter case it was necessary to meet a deadline. Later — I was more courageous and my colleague in the job knew about it, there were just two of us — I copied some materials even in my work. Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this.”

  • “Well, I enjoyed it very much. I guess I belonged among the slightly unusual children but I really liked going to school. And since I had good marks, namely in Czech and then in other languages, I was really happy. I didn’t even mind the drill since, as I say, I had good marks at school and found it really easy. I didn’t mind the environment. That we recited poems about Stalin and similar things, well I knew about this from my parents already. And my grandma was wise enough not to interfere. She let my parents to raise me the way they liked. She kept going to the church and I accompanied her. I had no problem to combine these two things. I even applied for religious education in the fourth year. It was still possible then. My grandma signed my application, the parents didn’t have to know. When they learned later, they were angry. And I still couldn’t understand why I couldn’t get educated and yet visit religion class.”

  • “We had an old television set, and it stopped working. My husband got an idea that we would throw away the screen and the internal parts and a friend of ours then made a kind of a grey plate which looked like a TV screen. If the StB came, they would not know at the first sight that the TV did not have a screen. It had an electric cord, too, which was inserted into a socket. It had a removable lid and every evening I would hide the book in progress with everything else inside that TV set. This was our hiding place.”

  • “Jirka Gruntorád then started giving me books, for example books by Egon Bondy, Bohumil Hrabal, the book Tank Battalion, which somebody from the samizdat lent to us and I thought – I have to transcribe it, we need to have it. This way it gradually developed. Or Pavel Rychetský would borrow some book from Škvorecký’s publishing house and I would sit down and transcribe it. I have copied around sixty books in eleven years.”

  • “I was allowed to visit him (brother – ed.’s note) every year. In 1985 I was bringing some things for him from the Jazz Section and I had a terribly unpleasant incident at the border because of that, probably because somebody had informed them. I was terrified, because I just happened to have books in the process of transcribing at home. Afterwards I phoned my family from Vienna, using various code words in order to tell them what they ought to do, but they did not understand anything, anyway. On the way to Vienna, they had led me out of the train and they confiscated everything that I carried, including my purse, unexposed film rolls, and dictionaries for my brother. I wanted them to give me a report, but they did not give it to me. They told me that they had already delayed the train at the border for forty-five minutes because of me, and that if I wanted to go, I should get on and go. I thus got on the train and went, because I was afraid – my brother was supposed to be waiting for me at the train station in Vienna, and if I had not arrived, he would have called to Prague, and there would be trouble.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 23.03.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 01:38:42
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 15.08.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 01:52:33
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She secretly transcribed 60 banned books

Tatjana 1968, graduation from secondary school
Tatjana 1968, graduation from secondary school
photo: archiv pamětnice

Tatjana Dohnalová, née Hejnyšová, was born on 4th November 1950 in Děčín, where she was being raised by her grandmother until she was five years old. Her parents Vladimír and Ludmila Hejnyš, who were actively involved in the Communist Party, meanwhile studied the University of Economics in Prague. Táňa began living with them in Prague in 1955. Two more children were later born into the family - Táňa’s brother Evžen who was six years younger, and eleven years younger Oleg. Tatjana Dohnalová belongs to a generation that began forming their opinions in the second half of the 1960s, and her views often differed from those of her parents who were Party members. Both her parents were expelled from the Communist Party in 1969. Táňa graduated from the general secondary school with extended language instruction around that time. She then married Jindřich Dohnal and she started a family. She began working in the cooperative Pokrok (‘Progress’), where she got acquainted with Pavel Rychetský. In 1977 she and her husband signed Charter 77, but following Pavel Rychetský’s advice, she later withdrew her signature. Mr. and Mrs. Dohnal had a little daughter at that time, who would have been left without parents if they had been both imprisoned. Their son was born in 1978. In 1978 Táňa began collaborating with Jiří Gruntorád and she started transcribing blacklisted books for his samizdat series Popelnice (‘Dustbin’). She later started copying so-called Infoch documents as well, which provided information to those who were interested in the activities of Charter 77. During eleven years she transcribed 60 samizdat books and for the entire time she managed to keep her activity completely unnoticed by the authorities. Both her brothers emigrated in the 1980s.