The father was dismissed immediately and taken outside the Zbrojovka gate
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Jaroslava Sedláková, née Havlátová, was born in Vsetín on 9 July 1950 into the family of Vladimír Havlát and Marta Havlátová. She grew up with her sister Marta who was one year younger. The family was greatly affected by the imprisonment of her father’s mother, Marie Havlátová. She served seven years of an eleven-year sentence over subversive activities (distribution of illegal anti-regime leaflets) in the Pardubice prison. In the autumn of 1948, her son Slavomír emigrated, while her other son Jan served in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP). In 1954, the witness’s father lost his job as a locksmith at the Zbrojovka factory in Vsetín where he had worked since his apprenticeship. The State Security took an interest in him and offered him to become its collaborator. When he refused, he was dismissed immediately and taken outside the gates of Zbrojovka. He was unable to find a job for three months and worked as a labourer until 1961. The witness’s family found themselves in a difficult situation and had no choice but to move in with their relatives in Velká Bíteš. Because of her father’s “unreliability”, neither the witness nor her sister were allowed to study. They trained as saleswomen and Jaroslava worked in a drugstore all her life. Immediately after the occupation of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Havláts wanted to emigrate. However, Jaroslava did not arrive at the train station at the agreed time, as she had already had a boyfriend at that time. A year later, she accidentally witnessed from afar the Brno anti-occupation demonstration where a young girl, Danuše Muzikářová, was shot dead. In 1986, she tried to emigrate together with her husband Jiří Sedlák and their two children. However, this was not possible because her husband had to undergo an acute surgery during their stay in Yugoslavia and was taken back to Czechoslovakia. During the ‘small privatisation’, the witness acquired the drug store in Vsetín where she had worked for many years before at an auction; she was even the head of the store prior to 1989. It was not until she was 51 that she fulfilled her dream, completing a two-year accounting and management study programme. Her grandmother Marie was rehabilitated while still alive, but her father never applied for rehabilitation. In 2022, Jaroslava Sedláková lived in Vsetín.
