Věra Ježková

* 1942

Relatives of important personalities, Svědci lokálních událostí z éry komunismu
21. 8. 1968 - Invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops, 17. 11. - 29. 12. 1989 - The Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia
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    Luckily no bombs fell down

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    duration: 01:25
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    "Dad rode in the train post office, which was the train carriage right behind the locomotive. And there they sorted the mail, they always stopped at each station and threw the mail in bags to the place where the mail was supposed to go. In other words, he was driving, let's say, Prague-Ostrava and it stopped at every town and he threw away the mail. Well, during the war there were raids on trains and that went directly to the locomotive. So it was like very dangerous. How many times did the train stop and they all ran and hid, until after the raid, they got back on the train and continued on. And just when they were transporting me like that on the train mail to Šumava, I was two years old and, in July, well, I was two and a half years old. Well, I remember my dad pushing me into such a letter pile. Then he said: 'Luckily, no bombs fell down.' Come on. Well, that's how I spent it."

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    We did not even get potatoes

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    duration: 00:38
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    "Well, how I experienced the year 1968 in Prague, for example. It was, it was terrible, yeah, when they arrived. Of course, my husband immediately ran to Václavák, where shots were fired at the Museum. It was horrible there indeed, we could see it all happening on TV. Immediately a crazy food line appeared, so I stood there for about four hours. Eventually it was just oatmeal, I know we didn't even get potatoes."

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    The soldiers hung their clothes on the tank barrel

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    duration: 01:28
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    "I lived in Vinohrady at the time, that's where I actually got married in Vinohrady. And there is such a huge park Grébovka, that's where I went with a stroller in the fall of 1968. And there were Bulgarians, at that time also Poles, Hungarians, Bulgarians and the GDR came here together with the Soviet Union, yes. […] Well, in that Grébovka, they settled in a nursery, yes. So there was a tank in that Grébovka and they hung their washed clothes on that barrel. And now it seemed so terribly completely apocalyptic, there were mothers with prams driving around that tank and it was there for, I don't know, a month, then they left, of course. That's right, the paving and asphalt were horribly destroyed by those tanks, so there were holes in it, yes. Terrible, eh."

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    Litoměřice, 08.11.2022

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    duration: 01:17:30
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The August invasion was an awful horror

Věra Ježková (en)
Věra Ježková (en)
photo: Post Bellum
photo: Post Bellum
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Věra Ježková was born on July 8, 1942 in Prague. During the war, she remembers hiding from air raids and also that at the end of the war, her parents preferred to take her to relatives outside of Prague. She graduated from the University of Economics in Prague, where she also met her future husband. She experienced the August invasion in 1968 in Vinohrady, Prague. She was on maternity leave with her first son at the time. She worked almost her entire professional life at the State Pedagogical Publishing House as an editor of textbooks for secondary schools. Her husband Tomáš Ježek refused to sign consent to the entry of Warsaw Pact troops, so he could not teach. He translated texts for the samizdat, before the revolution he worked at the Prognostic Institute. In the 1990s, he was the Minister for the Administration of National Property and its Privatization. In 2022, Věra Ježková lived in Litoměřice.

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Photos (5)
  • Photo from graduation of Věra Ježková
    Photo from graduation of Věra Ježková
    photo: archiv pamětnice
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  • Věra Ježková with her family
    Věra Ježková with her family
    photo: archiv pamětnice
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  • Student team at workshop in the Czech Radio
    Student team at workshop in the Czech Radio
    photo: Post Bellum
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  • Věra Ježková (en)
    Věra Ježková (en)
    photo: Post Bellum
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  • Věra Ježková (en)
    Věra Ježková (en)
    photo: Post Bellum
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Věra Ježková

  • date:
    09.06.2023
  • medium type:
    Internet
  • medium name:
    www.pribehynasichsousedu.cz