"We thought all things through together, we had confidence in each other. And what he was ahead of me in was in the spiritual realm, because he was a truly searching Christian who was constantly seeking the path closest to the way of Christ. Even in his relationship with other people, I think, he was very tolerant, kind and good-hearted and he really had a good heart to help everybody, even if they might be guilty of something. He was not a judge, he was not a judge of anyone. I'm surprised because I got angry many times, many times I fell into a negative attitude towards some people. Then I would compare it. It was also when I saw that he was actually experiencing the situation too, and yet he was getting over it much faster. It means he doesn't fall into that... judgmental thing. He doesn't fall for the judging."
"It was a bit, I would say, influenced by Taizé. Because I felt the need to talk to these people in the way I drew it from psychotherapy - to talk openly about their direction and their search for some kind of fulfillment, meaning in life. But that wasn't so common in the church, there were such, I would say... different ways of working with youth. And I suddenly saw in Taizé: it goes like that too, it's not something that stifles faith, on the contrary. And Freda experienced it like that there, so we actually started to work with the youth in an extended way in the youth congregation in Mladá Boleslav. And that was really fantastic. It was very demanding... The young people started to come to us first once a year or half a year for the so-called 'Big Boleslav'. And already there it showed that some people would like to meet and work more intensively. That was also the time of normalisation already. So, before the Charter, when it all collapsed, so in the early seventies, although it was after the occupation - or during the occupation - we came to the conclusion that it would be good to meet some of these seekers, real seekers, more often and more intensively. So Freda and I came to the conclusion that we would make two groups. One would be sort of meditative, sort of more theologically oriented, too, and political. And the other one will be personal. And that we would then exchange the groups, so there was always one meditative, the Christian one, you could say, and the other personal. And then we switched again, and this happened every month for a whole weekend. I always came to Kosmonosy on Monday morning completely drained."
"I personally owe it to him that he absolutely accepted my type of Christianity. I felt that I was going down a path that was a little off the beaten path. Whereas he really, I say, respected and acknowledged that path of mine so much that I got a little bit of my self-confidence back. Although I had been searching hard since I met my husband. I even went to theology classes with him because I wanted to understand him and at the same time I felt an empty space inside me that wanted to be filled with that Christian path. I've been longing for that all my life, but I'm not able to sort of accept that kind of language or those ways of expressing myself in the church. Somehow I can't bring myself to say that publicly. I've been under a lot of, I guess, pressure, too. At one time, Freda pressed me a lot. It was also his transition from Catholicism to Christianity, and somehow he felt it very intensely. And it wasn't that he was impatient, but he wanted to help me somehow, and he pushed me a little too hard. And I just resisted a little bit. Because I can't do this. I just have to do what I really feel internally."
"That's mostly what I did with Jana, the sociotherapy club. Plus often fellow junior doctors would join us. I told myself, these people need to get to know a little bit of other personalities too. So I regularly invited even dissidents there. So Ivan Klíma came there, Helena Klímová, Chytilová - Chytilová even wanted to make a film, but they forbade her to do that, of course. She wanted to make a documentary film, and Krátký film just forbade her categorically. Then there were also people from the religious field, of course my husband, he often came with me. He went abroad sometimes, but he also went with us on those rehabilitation stays. I thought that they had the opportunity to talk to a clergyman. The parish priest Kejř was there, or the musicians were there: Vladimír Merta, of course our Michael. Our Michael often came with me to the club. Karásek was there too. So I invited there, I would say... today somebody would say 'café society' - yes, somebody, we know who. So I was inviting people who were really thinking and who were looking for a way for our society." - "How did that communication go, say, between the 'mentally ill' and the 'normal people'?"-"Well, perfectly. Everyone was excited about the dissidents or the visitors, how open these people were, interested, asking questions. And I thought it was really appreciated when that one patient of mine, the most loyal one, a certain Přáda Jiří, an engineer Jiří Přáda, who is still in contact with me to this day - so I thought highly of his assessment. First of all, he said that actually I was equally open to all patients, one thing. And the second thing, the important thing, was that I was educating for democracy outside of psychotherapy. Which I didn't even realize, but they appreciated it that way. So even they were well oriented politically when the year eighty-nine came."
"Daddy was, I would say, a bit of a tragic figure from my point of view. It may be too strong a word, but he played the wrong card in his life. Because he did end up with the Communists, and I think that killed him too. Because the end of his life was really almost symbolic. Because the first blow that came to this idea of his that this was an ideology of justice and the future and highly humane - so the first blow came in 1956. I think it was the Communist Party Congress in the Soviet Union where the crimes of Stalin were exposed. So that was the first blow he got - indeed, he studied it, he had the document on his bedside table. And we weren't allowed to touch it! Not even touch it. He didn't want us to get our hands on it at all. Then the next blow came, that was 1968. That was the end. So he already tore apart the membership card. And I actually see the symbol in that he finally had a heart attack in '68. He had a heart attack, and they took him to the General Hospital, and the patients there said that when they heard about the burning of Jan Palach, he had a second heart attack. And that was just the final one. And they had a funeral together on the same day."
Psychologist Darja Kocábová was born on 7 January1931 in Prague. Since 1950 she studied psychology at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. In 1952, she married Alfréd Kocáb, then a student at the Huss Theological Faculty, who soon became a pastor of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren. They left their first pastorate in Zruč nad Sázavou for borderlands due to pressure from State Security and spent the 1960s in Chodov near Karlovy Vary. Darja Kocábová got a job in the outpatient clinic of child psychiatry and cooperated with Dr. Matějček and Langmeier in building SOS children’s villages. In 1969, when a significant part of the Chodov congregation emigrated, they moved to Mladá Boleslav. Even there, Darja Kocábová, together with senior doctor Erich Novák and MUDr. Tomášová, managed to build an outpatient paedopsychiatry clinic - before she was fired from the hospital in 1973 after the normalisation background checks. She then joined the dreaded Kosmonosy Psychiatric Hospital, but she gradually developed a whole new concept of psychological care for patients with psychoses there. She introduced group therapy, a day sanatorium, and a sociotherapeutic club for former patients. She stood at the birth of the first sheltered workshops, she devoted herself to group work directly in the families of patients. She herself also went through the famous SUR psychotherapy training and several times became the head of the training community. With her husband Alfréd Kocáb, she also worked with youth in the Mladá Boleslav congregation. This resulted in regular weekend youth meetings, during which Alfréd and Darja led a “meditative” and psychotherapy group. Their way of working was influenced by the ecumenical monastic community in Taizé, France, with which the youth choir in Mladá Boleslav also maintained a connection. In 1974, Alfréd Kocáb lost the state approval to exercise his clerical vocation, and the situation worsened after he signed Charter 77 in 1977. They became a burden for the elders of the congregation and in 1978 they left for Prague. Darja Kocábová nevertheless worked in Kosmonosy until 1996. Their son is the well-known musician Michael Kocáb, who was involved in activities both during the November Revolution in 1989 and later during the withdrawal of the occupying Soviet troops. Darja Kocábová died in March 2023.
