Taťána Lukešová

“My husband’s dismissal by the action committee was truly shocking, appalling, and especially treacherous. Because my husband had an assistant whom I won’t name. He knows all to well what he did. He brought my husband a party application form on 28 February, which he signed, and my husband tore it up saying that he could never do anything like that, that he could not go against himself. But he had no idea how hard a life was ahead of him. This assistant reported my husband’s actions to the personnel department. The personnel department was glad of the news mainly because there was one Communist architect there who had no work because all the directors (Jiří Krejčík, Gajer, Kadár, Klose) wanted my husband. So it was very useful for the Communist architect, who became a big functionary at Barrandov [film studios]. My husband was barred from setting foot in Barrandov. Not only that my husband was not allowed to return to Barrandov, but no matter where they wanted to take him in, whether it was Zdeněk Štěpánek of the National Theatre, or Vala from the Vinohrady Theatre, whether it was someone from the architectonic archives, they always received a personnel warning that my husband is an enemy of the state and that they must not accept him.”

“What fear, terror, and despair my mum must have felt during the bloody November revolution. Hidden under her bed, she heard the gunfire that killed several of those close to her. Aunt Antonie’s husband (a Czechoslovak legionary) managed to snatch up some of the family’s great wealth and rush to the last ship leaving Sevastopol. He took under his protection his wife Antonie, Aunt Evdokie, little Leonid - Lidushka’s son - he could not save the boy’s mother; and my mum. My grandmother Tatyana refused to flee abroad. For a long time she hid with her eldest daughter Marie in Moscow in unimaginable poverty, anxiety, and fear. My mum’s fear, an emigrant’s fear, remained with her her whole life. The worst was after the war when the Soviets searched for emigrants under the pretence of some certificate, and no one saw them ever again.”

“I was at home already, standing in the kitchen when somebody rang the bell. I went to open the door. A very thin gentleman was standing there, he was my daddy. I could not recognize him. He only told me: ‘Alice, I bid you farewell, tell mum.’ And just like that, he was gone.”

“So they did experiments on me. I don’t like thinking about it. It’s terribly humiliating, mortifying, and unbelievable that there existed, in the 20th century, such a thing as racial testing. Nonetheless, it really did exist, and I underwent it. They locked me up in a research institute where they cut my hair, checked my eyes, my gait, my speech. Simply everything that was supposed to be connected to Jewish behaviour. They locked me in there, and in the night I was the only person there in the whole big institute, bar the gatekeeper. I remember it as something unimaginably terrifying. I looked out of the window at people walking along the street, laughing and living as normal. And I was locked up and I had to learn to lie hard because I was stood on trial. And there at those German trials I had to say how my daddy, who loved me and pampered me, how he was cruel to me, that he beat me and so on. Because he knew I wasn’t his daughter. Mum managed the whole ignominy. Really, throughout the trials she stood proudly and declared that she never loved Dad, that she loved this here Kikiani, and that for this reason I was a Georgian.”

“Jan Masaryk bought me a doll and told me that he would give it to me if I behaved well. I promised him that, left with the doll only to return and tell him that I’d rather misbehave and gave him the doll back. He then told the story to the whole government. When the first American ball took place after the war, I received an invitation. I borrowed the most amazing dress at my friend’s who worked at the film studios in Barrandov. I came to the Municipal House, stood below the stairs and cried because I did not have the invitation with me. Suddenly, Jan Masaryk showed up. We exchanged looks; he had not seen me for years. I told him who I was and that I did not have the invitation. He took me over his shoulder in this beautiful dress and brought me upstairs, asking me whether I still misbehaved. I told him not at all and he took me to a room where the government was seated, an American ambassador and other important guests. It was beautiful and I also met my future husband there.”

“In Luxembourg I told my dad that I would like to become an actress. My dad called in an American actor who gave me a tryout and told dad that I was talented and that I should definitely do it. My dad wrote a letter to the movie director E. F. Burian who had a school. Dad wrote that he is indeed a theatre critic but that he refuses to criticise his own daughter, and asked him to have a good look whether I really had the skill to become a good actress. E. F. Burian called me in before a large commission and gave me a pounding. But they accepted me as a novice and let me act straight away. I did not manage to act and study grammar school at the same time. I had another breakdown. My mum said enough and my future husband asked me whether I would like to become his wife. I concluded that this would be the best idea. Not to act, not to finish school. I wanted to have children.”