We tried to live our lives no matter the circumstances
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Irena Konečná, née Švecová, was born in Blansko on August 14, 1945 into a family of a worker and a sales clerk. The family soon moved to the Jeseníky Mountains due to her father’s work. They all returned to Blansko in 1953. Irena Konečná was the eldest of five siblings, followed by her brother Jiří, sister Anna and twins Josef and Marie. Her maternal grandfather and grandmother Klevet served at the castle in Boskovice and in Rájec-Jestřebí. They met members of the Mensdorff-Pouilly, Sternberg and Salm families. After returning to Rájec, Irena Konečná saw the fate of the owners of the castle after the regime change, as well as the transformation of the countryside and its customs. She graduated from the secondary school of economics and got married in 1964. Between 1966 and 1973 she lived in Karviná, where her husband Antonín worked in the mines and they had their first daughter. There they lived through the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968. After her husband’s serious injury, which happened while working in the mine, the whole family returned to Blansko in 1973. Irena Konečná spent the revolutionary days of November 1989 in fear for her daughter Yvonne, who was actively involved in the Velvet Revolution in Brno. In the 1990s, she and her husband went into private business. Irena Konečná overcame a serious illness and became a grandmother of four. In 2019 she lived in Koclířov near Svitavy with her husband.
