“On 21 August my husband and I slept in our cottage, and in the night our neighbour bashed on our window and told us to switch the radio on. I drove straight to the office, which was already full of friends and journalists from all kinds of newspapers and from the radio. My husband went to his workplace in the hospital because he was head doctor of the children’s ward. We discussed what to do with our colleagues. We phoned to Pilsen to the printer which printed our newspaper. They told us the building was occupied by soldiers and that there wouldn’t be any newspaper. One colleague secured an unofficial printing press in one company in Karlovy Vary. We put together everything we could find out and we published one sheet informing on the main events that were happening. The amazing thing was that complete strangers would bring us food to our office. It was quite touching.”
“Vavřečka stopped going to the ministry. He pretty much stayed inside his home on Senovážné Square. The whole one floor of the house was occupied by two families, the Vavřečkas and the Havels, that is the father of President Havel. And Vavřečka often stayed at home and asked me over for some dictation. Vavřečka was a wonderful, educated person. There were two tiny little boys there. They kept running around, wanting ‘Granddad’ to carry them, and their mother, she was Vavřečka’s daughter, kept shooing them away. They loved their grandfather a lot, like everyone did. But the boys kept climbing all over Granddad anyway, distracting him and asking to sit on his lap and so on. And that was little Václav Havel and his brother. When Havel died, I wrote an article about this episode for Mladá fronta [a prominent Czech daily - trans.] Apart from that I highlighted the person of Hugo Vavřečka. He sent his Jewish subordinates to various job positions in America and all over the world. That way, he pretty much saved their lives.”
“The main purpose of the gatherings was that, what went on in Prague in the morning, then authentic witnesses of those events travelled to the various regional capitals and spoke about them there. In Karlovy Vary we gathered by the post office. People were very grateful for it. They stood there with candles, listened and sang. But when this went on for several days, we could see it wasn’t enough. So we were very happy to be able to move the gatherings into the theatre. It was chock-a-block there, the actors themselves spoke out, then other people from Karlovy Vary, and then the people from Prague. There was some guest there each time. But even that wasn’t enough. It was important - and the people of the Karlovy Vary Civic Forum did so at the time - to visit factories and plants in the region and discuss things with the employees there. The situation wasn’t simple, the People’s Militias were still active there. The main work consisted of encouraging the mood of people all over the district, not just in the city.”
“The profiling committee consisted of them saying: ‘Well, comrade, you have some kind of transgression.’ Or there was no transgression, no criticism, no resistance, and such a person kept his position no problem. If someone spoke up, they said: ‘Comrade, so and so, times have changed. You know well how it ended up, and you know that it ended up well for our nation, and so on... Back then you spoke out against the Soviet Union, in this and this way. All we ask is that you sign this statement, in which you voice your agreement with the armies’ entry [to Czechoslovakia]. And you’ll have no trouble. All we ask is that you realise you were mistaken and that you want to correct your mistakes, and nothing will happen to you.’ It was so simple. First off, to agree with the entry, that’s not so bad. What is it to enter, that’s no big deal... When someone signed it, they left him alone. But there were quite a lot of people who didn’t sign it.”
“It was after the Charter, when I was distributing copies of the Charter about the town. Unfortunately, I offered it to one acquaintance of mine who turned out to be a big confidant and informer, and he took it to State Security. They came to pick me up from my work. They put me into a car and took me in front of my house. That they were going to go inside my home. I absolutely did not want that, because I had the Charter half-written out on the type writer on my desk. So we argued for about an hour. I said I simply wouldn’t let them into my home. They were three blokes and the driver. The situation was getting very tense, they kept pressuring me and pressuring me... the driver, who’d been quiet the entire time, yelled: ‘For God’s sake, do something with her already, we’ve been here for ages!’ They didn’t know what to do with me. We were on the square, where there were people passing by all the time. Then it occurred to me to tell them that my husband would be coming home from work soon and that he’d kick up a racket. They knew him because they were used to summoning him for questioning. There was a short silence, and then they told me to go off then, but that I was to bring them my type writer.”
Anna Fidlerová, née Lhotáková, was born in 1919 in the village of Hospozín in central Bohemia. Her grandfather introduced her to politics and taking an interest in public matters. Her dream was to become a journalist. She spent her youth and student days in Prague. She was active in a group of young people interested in culture, called Young Culture. There she met with people such as Adolf Hoffmeister and Julius Fučík. Young Culture also gave her a loved one - a young Jewish man. Their relationship was crushed by his being transported to Auschwitz, where he died. In the meantime Anna worked as a secretary to Hugo Vavřečka, the grandfather of Václav Havel. She experienced the terror that gripped Prague after the successful assassination of Reinhard Heidrich, but also the joyful days of the city’s liberation. The persecution of her various loved ones showed her how cruel the Communist regime could be, even to its own people. She experienced the relaxed atmosphere of spring 1968 and the subsequent Warsaw Pact occupation in Karlovy Vary. Because of her journalistic activities, she was forced to quit her beloved profession, and she worked in various jobs, including as a cleaning lady. Even in her old age, she was still active in the public affairs of Karlovy Vary. Anna Fiedlerová passed avay on March 14th, 2016.
