Anna Pešatová

* 1937

  • "After the war, we went to nature a lot with our parents. My father has always sewn us bags from such stiff paper. We went to pick thyme, for example, it was the thyme that was torn before God's body. We made small wreaths. We were a religious family, so we spent a lot of time around ... on the one hand, we lived near the church, so we spent a lot of time there. Ministers went there, of course. Do you know who the minister is? This is a boy who serves at the altar. And so we played all sorts of nonsensical plays with them, as children do. ”

  • "He served with the PTP for a long time. For those battalions. My mother always said, 'So when are you coming home?' And the last time he came in the military clothes, he said, 'Mom, you didn't ask me when they'd let me go!' He had to work hard there. He explained how the material was wasted in all sorts of ways and how they punished them. Fathers from families were also locked up with them, so they served there as soldiers. "

  • "During the war, as children, we saw how the Germans walked, how they were dressed. They had those white stockings, long braids and sang. And we imitated them. We were pretended to be Germans (as part of play). And then Russian prisoners went there. And we were not allowed to give them anything. I don't know if anyone gave them anything. We were kids, we were just watching. And then after the war, we saw the Germans fleeing again. How they tried to get to the West. "

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 27.07.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:31:43
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 27.07.2020, 16.12.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 49:31
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Today we all tend to say it was not possible any other way during the Communist regime, but it is not true

Anna Pešatová as a child
Anna Pešatová as a child
photo: Archiv pamětnice

Anna Pešatová, née Jakubcová, was born on February 24, 1937 in Ústí nad Orlicí as the eighth child in the family of upholsterers František and Marie Jakubcovi. After February 1948, František Jakubec was labelled as an exploiter by the regime, because he employed an orphan in the workshop, to whom he provided an apartment and food. The religious family did not renounce their faith even under the increasing pressure of the communist regime. The witness’s brothers, Josef and Václav Jakubec, served as priests. In 1950, Josef witnessed Action K at the Jesuit grammar school in Prague-Bubeneč. Both brothers had to join the PTP. Anna’s uncle was the well-known Jesuit priest Josef Jakubec, who was sentenced in the 1950 trial to twenty years for high treason. He died after five years in prison. Anna was not allowed to study and she was bullied by her supervisor at work. During her wedding, which took place in the church, the area was crowded with plainclothes police. She and her husband Josef raised two sons, Pavel and Josef. They faced the dullness of the coming normalization with the fact that they did not give up their faith - on the contrary, they sent their sons on secret pastoral holiday stays, so-called cottages, organized by Karl Herbst. In 2020, Anna Pešatová lived with her husband in Prague.