"For our honeymoon we went to Yugoslavia, where we crossed this mountain illegally. I know we hiked over this hill called Big Ponca [Visoka Ponca/ Ponza Grande]. We left the car on the Yugoslav side of the border and hitchhiked to Venice, because we had dreamt of having our honeymoon in Venice. Because we didn't feel like returning home to the totalitarian decadence by climbing over that dry and scorching mountain, we remained in a car and didn't get out before the border, we let ourselves be driven. However, vigilant border guards on the Italo-Yugoslav border discovered us and we were put on trial for a criminal offence. There was a very generous judge, to whom we bluntly explained that we had just hiked over the mountain illegally and that we were returning to our little car parked in the next valley. The judge asked if we had any money so that she could fine us. We said we didn't have any. She told us: 'Okay, I'll give you a deterrent, but burn this ruling before reaching the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic!'"
"At Hrádeček this humorous situation took place. When they got to Hrádeček, there was an inversion. In short, they Hrádeček found itself above the clouds and the sun was shining beautifully, which made the guardhouse that the State Security had placed in front of the entrance even more visible. When the car stopped and the three partakers in the meeting, who had come to see Václav Havel, got out, the State Security Agents checked them thoroughly. They wanted to see their documents. Dr. Groch, as always, had no documents. I don't know if he didn't have them at all, or if he kept them in Brno or somewhere else. In short, he stayed a while by the guardhouse. Václav Havel was said to be running around like a goblin saying: 'Why is he not coming? Why is he not coming?' My husband said: 'He forgot his documents. That will probably be the problem, God knows if they will even let him in.' And Havel said: 'They’re the nice guards today, they will let him in.'"
"They told me that Comrade Sodomková from the Local Administration Office, or whatever the department was called at the time, was tearing down my posters. She was a well-worn communist that the people of Jaroměř could see right through and hated. I put the posters higher and higher, until, one day, I bought a roll of wrapping paper and placed it in my first-floor window. On the paper I wrote an inscription saying that no dialogue could arise from tearing down posters, as Comrade Sodomková and Comrade Valášek did. I named these big mucky-mucks. They took a ladder and tore down the roll of paper from in between the windows. But their names had already been made public and I most certainly made other signs that I tried to place as high as possible above the entrance to my house, above the shop windows, so that it would be difficult to take them down."
Iva Rudolecká, born Nývltová, was born on June 25, 1959 in Jaroměř. Her mother came from a kulak family from Vlkov, she was not allowed to go to university and made a living as an office clerk. Her father taught chemistry at a high school. She had a younger sister, Táňa. Iva went to primary school and grammar school in Jaroměř and graduated in 1978. She studied at the Faculty of Law in Brno and met her husband Zdeněk Rudolecký. In 1982, she graduated and moved to Jaroměř with her husband. She worked at the Východočeská plynárenská (East-Bohemian Gasworks). She surrounded herself with a group of friends she knew from an art course led by the sculptor Jiří Škopek. She was friends with Jan Hrudka, a signatory of the Charter77 from Jaroměř. In 1989, they organized an unofficial seminar in one of their homes and invited Jaroslav Šabata. In November 1989, her husband visited Václav Havel several times in Hrádeček. After the 17th of November, she hang up flyers and posters promoting the Civic Forum in the shop windows of her house on the main square in Jaroměř. Her husband co-organized Václav Havel’s visit to Jaroměř in January 1990. In 2022, she was still living in Jaroměř.
Standing from the left: Petr Horák, Juraj Groch, Zdeněk Rudolecký, Tomáš Kepka, lying down: the owner of the pub in 1982 near the military division 1745 Bor u Tachova
Standing from the left: Petr Horák, Juraj Groch, Zdeněk Rudolecký, Tomáš Kepka, lying down: the owner of the pub in 1982 near the military division 1745 Bor u Tachova
From the left, Zdeněk Rudolecký's mother, Iva Rudolecká, her husband Zdeněk Rudolecký, her sister Táňa and Jiří Jaskmanický at a pig slaughter at her grandmother Žočková's farm. Jiří Jaskmanický, later chairman of the town university board of the Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union, back then he was dancing with Iva's sister Táňa.
From the left, Zdeněk Rudolecký's mother, Iva Rudolecká, her husband Zdeněk Rudolecký, her sister Táňa and Jiří Jaskmanický at a pig slaughter at her grandmother Žočková's farm. Jiří Jaskmanický, later chairman of the town university board of the Czechoslovak Socialist Youth Union, back then he was dancing with Iva's sister Táňa.
