Alena Gebertová

* 1946

  • "I have a memory of the seventies... We were young, so it was fine, but it was really dark. The seventies, they were... After those beautiful sixties that was a terrible turning point, in every way. It was so dead, grey, joyless. I also connected it with the fact that I had some health problems, but hopeless, those years were really... Those eighties, for some reason, you felt you had breathed a little more."

  • "We were left with no funds, my dad had an account and my mum asked if she could... - because it was blocked, if they could unblock it, which they did. Well, but mom went to work right after that, just as a bookbinder. Well, and dad, when he came out of prison, so he - it went gradually - so he trained as an electrician. I know he kind of took it - at least as far as I have that memory - without much bitterness, that's just the way it was. Because we had a nice life, they made a nice life for us. It must have been terrible for him, I see it that way in retrospect. He trained as an electrician - we had the security of having everything working at home, the electricity, dad taking care of everything. But at the same time, I remember him giving legal, legal advice to some people from time to time, that they would come to us. I'm deeply convinced that he did it for free."

  • "Then I remember when my dad came back, because I was just playing in the street, because in those days you could play in the street, which I did very often, I liked living in the street. And when the taxi brought dad, I can totally see him, what a coat he was wearing, a light-coloured jacket. We came home together, my grandmother was living with us at the time, too, my grandmother. My mother was in the pantry, doing something on the rack, and I know my grandmother called to her, 'Zdena, come down,' because she was afraid that under the influence of those emotions it might not turn out well. That's what I remember."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 28.11.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:34:29
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

The ’70s, that was a terrible turning point

Alena Gebertová, 90s
Alena Gebertová, 90s
photo: Archive of the witness

Alena Gebertová was born in Prague on 9 July 1946 to her mother Zdená and father Vladimír Lindner. Her father was a well-known lawyer who represented the defendants in the Střítecký and Co. and Modrý and Co. trials, where national team hockey players were convicted. He was arrested in 1951, accused of endangering state secrets, which he was supposed to have committed by passing on information about the “secret” trials. He was acquitted of the charges and released five months later. Her father’s imprisonment had no effect on her education; after graduating from the Nad Štolou Gymnasium, she was admitted to the University of 17 November, where in 1968 she received a diploma in interpreting and translating from French and Russian. She experienced the relaxed atmosphere of the Prague Spring, which was brought to an end by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. Alena Gebertová was living in Switzerland at the time, but she did not consider emigrating. She worked at the Czechoslovak Radio, in the Foreign Broadcasting Department, as a translator from French and a journalist. At the beginning of the 1970s she married the architect Jiří Gebert and they had two sons. Her husband emigrated to Germany in 1986. Although Alena Gebert received an exit permit, she did not want to leave her country and did not join her husband this time either. She retired from Czech Radio in 2011 as head of the French section of Radio Prague. In 2023 she was still working occasionally for the radio, pursuing her hobbies - bridge and choral singing, and living in Prague.