“A young assistant director was reorganizing and a consolidation of three departments of natural science was going to happen. Technical workers, documentalists were going to leave. Four of us university graduates stayed there, three men and a woman. The assistant decided and told them that the female doctor was still young and that her time would come. They expected me to work as a secretary. I got angry. They had persuaded me to join the Party. I had refused it saying that I was commuting and taking care of my aunt and uncle who was almost ninety years old and I had a little child. I said: ‘No, I will not join the Party.‘ It was an excuse at that time, I had my life experience and I did not want to join it. I refused it and I think that it was a revenge.”
“I started to work in June. We were sitting with workers of the department in the Folk house in Rokycany in June and our economist said: ‘I have to tell you something. We have decided to accept you to the Party.‘ And I said: ‘But comrade Voříšková you forgot something. [You forgot] to ask me if I wanted to.‘ They were looking at me in disbelief. She told me: ‘You are thirty-eight years old now, you have a high time.‘ I said: ‘I stuck with it until this day and I think that I can continue to stick with it.‘ So nothing happened, they were frowning at me a little in the department but I kept saying that I would not join the Party. I paid for it by never getting a bonus but I was never used to spending a lot of money so we somehow managed it with my husband.”
“I applied [for a job] in Toužim, in the area of Klatovy and in the area of Rokycany but they did not need a teacher anywhere. If they had at least a part-time job in the district for the teaching specialization they employed you thanks to so called section. And it mattered there if you had the right membership card. Engineer Juza, who taught us Crop production, suggested joining the Party to me and persuaded me already at the Pedagogical Faculty in 1968 to do it. I said: ‘No, I don´t want to join the Party. I can work for myself, for my family and society and I don´t need the membership card. I am young for it, I have no experience.‘ It was dropped like this and nothing was happening.”
“The camp leader was listening to a radio around the 21st of August. We went to put children to beds and he called us. He said that children would not keep guards and that we would keep guards in case something was happening. So, we put children to beds and we walked around the camp. We heard horrible noise, helicopters, machinery. We did not know what was going on. We mainly took care of children staying inside the tents and about avoiding a problem. We found out in the morning that the whole camp was besieged by army and that there were soldiers in trenches and that there were helicopters in the meadows and tanks were standing around the forest road. We already knew in the morning that something that should have not happened took place. Then, we were all in the canteen and a GAZ car arrived. The officer had a number or decorations, he was an older man. They said that they had arrived to help us, that there was contra revolution here and he said: ‘I was here in 1945 during the liberation of Prague.‘ We agreed that there was nothing to be done and that we had to cancel the camp. The officer gave a pass to the leader, we ordered a bus and we took children away.”
RNDr. Mgr. Miroslava Šandová was born on 20 April 1947 in Hostomice pod Brdy to a family of teachers. She grew up in a small farm in Hořovice in the area of Beroun. Her grandfather Adolf Bendl had a cake shop, which was later nationalised, in the town. As a student of the Pedagogical Faculty, she took part in a student´s protest Majales (students´ spring celebrations - translator’s note) in 1968 in Pilsen. She experienced August occupation as a pioneer camp leader near Svatobor close to West Bohemian Sušice where she met with intervention army. After graduation, the witness vainly tried to get a job of a teacher because she was an independent. The fact that her father Kamil Štochl left the Czechoslovak Communist Party in the 1950s also played a part. She eventually became a preparator in Museum of West Bohemia in Pilsen. She received her doctorate degree in Science in 1979. However, they wanted her to work as a secretary in the Museum because she refused to join the Czechoslovak Communist Party for the second time. That is why she started to work in the regional national committee as a nature conservation inspector. She refused the offer to join the Party for the third time here and she paid for it by getting less money. She became a director of the present Museum of Dr. Bohuslav Horák in Rokycany in 1990. She largely contributed to the transformation of the Museum into a modern and successful institution. She cooperated with the local Union of Freedom Fighters who offered her a membership as an expression of gratitude. She still worked as a curator of collections - a botanist in the museum in Rokycany in 2020.
