Dad was never allowed home again. He used to put flowers on his parents’ grave secretly in the dark
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Marie Sobolová, née Kučerová, was born on 14 April 1943 in Sedlec near Vysoké Mýto, where she grew up together with her older brother. Her father, Stanislav Kučera, served as mayor of the village during the war and after the February communist coup, he first resisted the absurdly high deliveries he had to make and ended up in court several times. In August 1952, a court in Vysoké mýto finally sentenced her father to an eight-month prison sentence, which he served first in the prison in Chrudim and later as a prisoner building the Křižanovice dam. The family had to be separated. While her father was serving his sentence, her brother had to move in with his uncle and Marie and her mother found refuge in Janov u Litomyšli, where her mother’s brother lived. As the daughter of a kulak, Marie faced ridicule and bullying at school, not only from her classmates but also from her teachers. Because of her poor grades, she was not admitted to her dream secondary school of education, so she became a shop assistant. In 1963 she married and she and her husband moved to Hradec Králové, where they raised three sons. After the revolution, she managed to get back some of the property that had been stolen from the family in the 1950s. In the 1990s, she was active in the Confederation of Political Prisoners, where she found not only friends but also legal help. In 2023 she was living in Hradec Kralove.
