“As an adolescent I participated in the All Sokol Rally in 1948. Mrs. Benešová was no longer there, suddenly there was Marta [Gottwaldová]. I don’t know whose idea it was, but we were shouting a rhyme: ‘We like Mrs. Hana, she can’t be replaced by Marta.’ It cost me my tooth. We were beaten. I lost my tooth and my documents, but we survived. They picked us, because they wanted to take a revenge on us because we were Sokols.”
“And then they brought in the prisoners. He was completely bent forwards as he was walking. He did not speak, he was gaunt, with his head down. He was from Paskov, his father owned the largest soft drink factory. But since Líba Jenišová knew him, her father was a businessman as well, , she told me: ‘This can’t be, this is Sýkora.’ We were to start writing. The people from Prague spoke, and the woman judge stood up. He was sitting in such a way that he was facing the polyclinic and I could see his face from the profile. He had a dark suit, light blue shirt and pink tie. I could see him. They were asking questions. He kept saying: ‘Yes, no, I don’t know.’ What were we to write? ‘The damned bitch!’ The local drunkards were shouting. I asked aloud: ‘What are we supposed to write in the record, Mr. Havránek?’ And Líba told me that we would write an X mark every time a swear word was said. Havránek told us to be quiet, and she got slapped by him. They were all drunk, they all had bottles with them.”
“There were so called policemen, soldiers. But they were not regular policeman, they were StB policemen, members of the Communist Party. When it was over, we marched towards the main platform. There were four platforms for spectators. We marched to the largest one and it looked as if they had been waiting for us from Ostrava. It cost me my tooth. Líba could not see with one of her eyes. She had already been beaten before. We were simply beaten, terribly beaten. They transported us to the accommodation facility and then it started all over again. We were being called in groups of two or three to the office. And there was interrogation.”
Alena Grušková was born on June 10, 1932 in Ostrava. Her father Bohuš Bittner was a policeman, but he was arrested at the end of the war and dismissed from the police. Many of their relatives and friends have died in concentration camps. Alena suffered a serious injury during the bombing of Ostrava in 1944 and she witnessed many of the events related to World War Two in the region of Ostrava. Her parents and relatives were active in the Sokol movement. In 1948 she took part in the 11th All Sokol Rally in Prague. She was among those who openly expressed their disapproval with the communist take over of power in Czechoslovakia. As she was leaving the stadium, she was beaten so brutally that she lost her tooth. After two years of study at a trade academy she began working as a secretary. Since she was skilled in stenography, Alena and her friend were selected to work as court reporters for the court trial “Buchal and Co.” This court trial took place in summer 1950 in Ostrava and it followed after a series of show trials in which the communists were taking revenge on their opponents. She was an eye witness to what had happened in the Čapek Sokol gym in Ostrava during the trial because she was there to make a verbatim record. Until her retirement she worked as a secretary and later as an archivist in a chemical factory in Ostrava - Hrušov. Alena Grušková died in 2020.
