Věra Náhlíková

* 1958

  • „So, we went to Albertov and we liked it because the speeches were really daring and kind of beyond the common practice that the Communist youth would normally put a bridle on. And then, spontaneously, we walked to Vyšehrad and from Vyšehrad people were going downhill. But as we were walking in the front section of the procession, we said to ourselves: ‘We cannot take this street, there is a cordon there, they won’t let us.’ Then the procession descended down from Vyšehrad completely spontaneously and we looked for the streets in which they then chased after us until they drove us to the waterfront, and we walked on the waterfront then. And when we walked past the waterfront, where Havel had already been, many people had already known of course… So, they started chanting Havel’s name. And the policemen practically guided us to the Národní avenue themselves. We originally wanted to cross to Wenceslas Square, but it had been guarded. They didn’t let anyone in. Well, and then we were stuck on Národní in front of the police plexiglass, which is on all those famous pictures, that’s all well known. And then – what next? So, we were singing, sitting down, singing, sitting down… And waiting what would come next.”

  • „A week later we had this tramp gathering. Apart from writing some samizdat literature, there were also competitions. Because tramps had also had literary competitions. That’s what the magazines we published had been based on. And one of these competitions was supposed to take place in Branov, in the ferry of Ota Pavel. We rented a ferry; I don’t remember anymore who had managed to do that… So, we just met there, the Saturday following the Palach Week. Many people from Prague came and we were there as well. There were about twenty-five of us. And we had kind of a literary meeting there. And because it was a literary meeting and because it was in Branov, we also copied short stories of Ota Pavel, for example A Race Through Prague. It was those short stories that hadn’t been published in time but were really dense and had a lot to say. And so, we took these short stories there to read them, since it was Branov which is closely connected with Ota Pavel. And as we met there after the Palach Week, we found out that we all had attended various days of the demonstration. And the kids started to show each other their bruises. Some had them yellow, some green, some red and some purple… depending on the day they got beaten up. That was really strange. Especially in the atmosphere following the Palach Week, which somehow started and somehow ended – and nothing; we were reading the short stories by Ota Pavel and I remember that we all started crying. It’s still moving for me to this day. It was very emotional. We knew something had to happen, something had to be done. That it couldn’t go on like that.”

  • „And I copied the leaflet [with an invitation to festival Porta in Olomouc] and handed it out to all my tramp friends, which of course didn’t go unnoticed by the higher authorities. So, in June 1979 I was subjected to my first interrogation, when I had to give an oral explanation here in Pilsen of the nature of the leaflet, where I had gotten it, who had given it to me, where I had been distributing it… In the end they basically threatened me that I couldn’t attend the Porta festival, that they were not allowing me to, and they recommended I wouldn’t even show up, because if they met me there it wouldn’t end up well for me. Well, back then I had already experienced some police controls like this, so they already had me filed, because it regularly happened that a yellow-white car of the Public Security stopped you at a railway station, police officers jumped out of it and controlled all the tramps, writing down our IDs and information about where we were headed, why and so on. Also, when there were campfires taking place, they came saying it had been forbidden and that we had to disband, and they checked all of us again.”

  • they established a base there following 1968, which they called ‘Na Patě’. It was between Aš and in the direction of Cheb. A large multi-kilometer area that they surrounded with a concrete wall and where the Soviet soldiers lived. And then they also lived a little North of Aš where they had also established a base. In short, apart from the numerous Czech barracks, suddenly several more Russian barracks emerged. These were really Russian soldiers only. And it was strange because it was like an occupation of an already occupied territory. And they really stayed there until 1990. And I remember how we later got into the complex after the Soviets had left and we were surprised to find small houses and gardens… Behind the high wall, where a normal person couldn’t get, they had lived a completely normal life there, a city inside of a city.”

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    Plzeň, 28.03.2019

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My only fear was the fear of hurting someone

Věra Náhlíková's ID photo (1980s)
Věra Náhlíková's ID photo (1980s)
photo: Archiv pamětnice

Věra Náhlíková was born March 17, 1958 in the borderland city Aš, where she lived until she was nineteen. Her mother came from Polná near Jihlava, her father was from Příbram. When she was ten years old, she witnessed the Warsaw Pact Invasion in Aš. After graduating from a textile high school in Aš she moved to Pilsen where she worked as an educator and a cultural referent for many years. She was deeply influenced by the tramping movement and was, thanks to the Foglar girls club, in contact with Jaroslav Foglar, whom she first visited in 1981. In June 1979 she was subjected to her first interrogation by the State Security for distributing leaflets for the Porta festival in Olomouc. Her participation in the founding of a samizdat magazine Pajda also didn’t go unnoticed by the regime. She copied and distributed other banned literature. Apart from tramping, Věra was also influenced by the woodcraft movement. In 1987 she attended a meeting of the old woodcrafters by Miloš Seifert’s grave and then a discussion in Pilsen with Jaroslav Foglar the following year. She had a first-hand experience of the Palach Week. She signed the ‘Několik vět’ petition and a petition of cultural workers for the release of Václav Havel. She also co-organized the first Pilsen demonstration on the occasion of 44th anniversary of the U.S. liberation of Pilsen and attended the November 17, 1989 demonstration in Prague. She is dedicated to tramping and scouting to this day. She continues to monitor the current political landscape together with her husband, who is active in local politics.