When she wasn’t allowed to go to school for political reasons, she thought about suicide
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Ivana Richterová was born on 2 January 1945 in Police nad Metují. Her parents owned an inn with a theatre hall, which was nationalized in the early 1950s. Her mother and children were treated for tuberculosis for a long time in the 1950s and suffered from the loneliness that this disease brings. When they wanted to evict the family in the early 1960s, the house had burned down shortly before. The father was arrested and held in jail for two days on suspicion of setting fire to the property rather than handing it over to the socialist state. After that, the family members had to split up, and it took a year to get a new apartment. The children were given asylum with friends in a theatre in Police, while the father and mother lived alone. Since the witness was from a merchant and a Catholic-practicing family, she could not study at her dream school. She was even banned from further education. In August 1968, she and her friends produced and distributed anti-Soviet leaflets in villages and towns. She did the same in November 1989 during the Velvet Revolution. She refused an offer to join the Communist Party. All her life, she devoted herself to amateur theatre, acting, and directing in two amateur societies. She graduated from the People’s Conservatory, majoring in directing and dramaturgy. She encouraged and taught children and young people who wanted to play theatre. She became one of the organizers of the Jirásek’s Hronov theatre show. She was involved in a retirement home in Police, reading to the elderly and preparing various events for them. In 2022 she lived in her apartment in Police nad Metují.
