“I joined Pioneer in my seventh year, since my parents were told at the school meeting that I had to. I was on the black list of those who did not come to the Pioneer meetings. My mother was summoned by the director and teachers. She was told that if I did not join they would not be able to provide recommendation for me to be accepted to the secondary school. Or that it might had an impact on me being accepted. My average mark was one. And they said to my mum that they strongly recommended that I joined in. Fortunately, we had a fine leader in Pioneer and she did not take it politically. So we went to the Masaryk School, ran around Štěpánka and played in a playground. There was no political activity. I joined Pioneer in my seventh or eight year.”
“It was at the end of March that former scout leaders met, they were about the age of my parents. My mum was not really interested since I had just before my school-leaving exam. She was not interested in me getting involved. On April 17, there was a major recruitment, over two hundred children applied. They were divided into units. It was really difficult for the leaders. They wanted scouts to be presented in a procession. They put some children into uniforms, they gave them shirts. They put together old flags. They marched, got tremendous respect and applause and I was sorry that I could not go along with them.”
“When the meeting was over, some units were already dissolved, the senior leaders gathered – people of my mum’s age. We made a ceremonial line-up. We were all in uniforms. My mum took badges from the girls and put them on the flag, saying she would keep the flag and hide it for better times.”
Marie Rypáčková was born on July 16, 1950, in Jičín. Her family ran into problems as it consisted of many self-employed persons, scouts and members of the Sokol organisation. Her uncle Jan Drahota was sentenced to death in a political trial, later the sentence was mitigated. After his release his home served as a meeting point for former political prisoners. In the late 1960s, she and her mother Marie Mazánková renewed the girl scout unit in Mladá Boleslav. She continued to lead the unit even after it was integrated under the Pioneer banner. She studied Faculty of Electrotechnology at Czech Technical University. In 1989 she contributed to the reopening of the scout centre in Mladá Boleslav.
