Libuše Lacinová

* 1921  †︎ 2018

  • “I think I am one of the few people - if not the very last - who personally met President Masaryk. President Masaryk was a persona grata in our family, as in the families of all legionaries. He was adored like a demigod, and I saw him as huge role model from my earliest years. Back then - I might have been four or five years old - he invited the families of legionaries with their children to the grand park in Židlochovice, where he was spending his holiday. I remember how we waited there, and suddenly a handsome old gentleman rode up on a horse. He dismounted, walk among us, and stopped by some of the legionaries and spoke a few words with them. He came to my dad as well, he also stopped, he leaned down towards me and asked: ‘What’s your name, little girl?’ I said: ‘Libuška.’ And he stroked me on the head. I was in seventh heaven.”

  • “We lived in Kounicova Street, and because there weren’t any cars about, the Hitlerjugend used to march down the middle of the street frequently, almost daily, with drums and whistles. Gentlemen wore hats in those days. These boys expected grown men to take off their hats to them. When they didn’t, these boys went and knocked their hats off on the pavement.”

  • “I was there during that awful air raid. It happened sometime in the morning. Dad used to go for a smoke outside the arcade, where there aren’t any buildings. Back then I had this foreboding, there was an alarm, and suddenly I had this instinct that I rushed upstairs for Dad and dragged him down into the cloakroom. If he’d stayed there, he would’ve been done for.”

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    Brno - byt Libuše Lacinové, 25.07.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 03:03:57
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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You shouldn’t envy anyone anything, you should wish people the best and take an interest in them, in politics, in everything, no matter how old you are

Libuše Lacinová
Libuše Lacinová
photo: album pamětnice

Libuše Lacinová, née Čejková, was born on 10 December 1921 in Brno. Her father was a World War I legionary who took an interest in cinematography and owned Alfa Cinema. The wintess grew up knowing numerous celebrities - Oldřich Nový, Jiří Voskovec and Jan Werich, Lída Baarová, Svatopluk Beneš, and many others. Libuše Lacinová studied at the Girls’ Reformed Grammar School in Augustine Street in Brno. She earned a state degree in French and German and graduated from singing at a conservatoire. Already as a student she sang at the Meeting Hall and other smaller venues. She performed as a soloist for several years. She married the architect Lubor Lacina. She later gave up her singing career due to an illness and worked as a journalist. She published in Práce (Work), Svět v obrazech (The World in Pictures), Pražská tvorba (Prague Creation), or Rovnost (Equality). She also wrote texts about exhibitions and art. She herself was active in the artistic community and was acquainted with numerous notable figures, including Vilma Lesková, Adolf Kroupa, Vítězslava Kaprálová, etc. She sat as a model to the painters Jánoš Kubíček and Bohumír Matal. The witness also worked as an interpreter at the Brno Exhibition Centre and as a translator at a medical library. She also translated for Czech Television - the TV series Komisař Rex, Stefanie, Wolffův revír, or Sissi. She cooperated with the publishing house Moba and received an award for her book translations in 2002. She has a son, Lubor. Some of the famous people she has met include Václav Chochola, Miloš Havel, Adolf Hoffmeister, Věra Sládková, Jiří Mahen, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Gérard Philipe, Janis Ritsos, and so on.