“My husband left, and I had to pick up my passport at the Swedish embassy. I got off the tram and two men were standing there and said: ‘Where are you going, madam? And I told them I was going to pick up my passport from the Swedish embassy. They told me: ‘Go home, do not go anywhere, your passport had been confiscated by the Ministry of the Interior.‘ I got scared, and they went with me, I stayed in Prague, and they kept guarding me. I went with the pram, and they followed me. I got on the tram, they got on the tram, I got off the tram, they got off the tram, I went to the park, and they followed me. I told them after a while: ‘You know what, we will say hi to each other, we know each other anyway. ‘”
“The door suddenly opened, and Jan Masaryk walked in. Bohouš walked towards him and said: ‘Mr. Minister, can I introduce you to my wife? And Jan Masaryk said: ‘Of course, it would be my pleasure.‘ And until that moment I was sitting there with Jan Masaryk because he did not like to dance and kept me company because I was pregnant. That is why he was sitting there with me, and we were talking.
Of course, we talked about the time he was in America and how he accompanied Jarmila Novotná on the piano and she sang, it was beautiful. And he then asked me: ‘Mrs. Šormová, what are you expecting, what are you having?‘ And I said: ‘We are having a baby, Mr Minister.‘ And he said: ‘Have you picked out a name yet?‘ And I said: ‘If she is a girl, we will call her Štěpánka after mum and if he is a boy, I would dare to call him Tomáš after your father.‘ And as I was looking at him, his eyes were watering, he was pleased.
And the worst thing was that we never saw each other after that. And when I was riding with Tomášek in the pram in front of the Basilica of St. Ludmila, I went around Valdek and there was a loudspeaker. And suddenly there was a special announcement - Jan Masaryk was found dead in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yard today in the morning. I was shocked and immediately ran to see my mum in Italská Street, she answered the door, and she was of course crying, then the two of us prayed. This is how I met Jan Masaryk.”
“Petra Procházková handed in her press accreditation and founded an orphanage in Grozny. The children were there during the day and returned to the ruins for the night. It reminded me of my journey in 1946 when I went from Czechoslovakia to France through the French part of shattered Germany, and I went through the ruins of Germany... it was dark... cold... only light here and there otherwise it was horrible. I realized that those children would be there at night and that they would be cold, and I thought that I would work for those children. I would work for them so that they would get warm, and I started knitting. Back then I still had wool and knitted until I knitted a bunch of socks and gloves.
And now how to get them to Petra in Grozny? I tried to find out where she was, I made several phone calls and I managed to call a place where they told me: ‘She´s here.‘ And I said: ‘Could I speak to her?‘ And they said: ‘Of course‘ and I said: ‘Mrs. Procházková I have some things for you and your children, where can a hand them over to you?‘ She replied: ‘I will come to get them.‘ She came here and took them. It was Easter and she brought me gifts, and everything turned out well. She then left and I kept knitting.
I did not know what to do and who to hand them over when she was no longer there. They told me: ‘Try People in Need.‘ So I called them and spoke to Pánek. I said: ‘Mr. Pánek, please I need to transfer o box with fifty pairs of socks for children to the Berkat organization in Grozny.‘ He said: ‘We will come to get them,‘ and I said: ‘No, I will not way, I will take it to you on my own.‘ Thank goodness, they took it over and then wrote me that they handed it over okay.
And I kept knitting and Petra Procházková wrote once in a newspaper that the Catholic Charity was taking care of my house well. So, I would always make stuff, pack it in a package, and take it to Vladislavova Street. Well, that is how it started. “
Věra Šormová, née Albrechtová was born on 14 February 1920 in Prague to a mixed Czech-Polish family. She was interested in studying languages since her childhood but because of her father´s illness, she had to study at Business Academy. She started to work in Ringhoffer Tatra company where she oversaw administrative and later translations. In 1942 she started working as an editor at Orbis publishing house and later she worked as a secretary of poet František Halas. After the war, she got an offer to work at the Czechoslovak embassy in London where she was employed as a translator. There she met her future husband diplomat Bohumil Šorma whom she married in 1946. They later left to work in Paris where their son Tomáš was born in 1947. They returned to Prague the same year. The persecution of the whole family gradually started after the February putsch. Her husband was fired from the civil service and worked in various blue-collar jobs; he ended up as an administrative worker at ČKD. Their son Štěpán was born in the meantime, however, he died shortly; their daughter Tereza was born later. Věra faced surveillance by State Security, however, she managed to find a job as an interpreter and translator of technical literature at Škoda company and later at Spojprojekt company. She was fired from there in 1971 because of supporting the liberation process of the 1960s. She then made a living as an occasional translator and by making handicrafts. Her husband died shortly after November 1989. The second Russian-Chechen war around the year 2000 was an impulse for Věra Šormová to start working systematically on humanitarian aid. She started to support Chechen orphans and families with hand-knitted scarves, hats, and other products, which she transported to Chechnya through People in Need and Charity of the Czech Republic. She provided financial support to selected children and families from afar and gradually expanded her help to other countries and projects. Among the most important were hospitals in Pakistan, as well as old people’s homes in Moldova and disabled children in Ukraine. In 2010, she received the Charity of the Czech Republic Award for her selfless work. Věra Šormová died on 24 February 2023 at the age of one hundred and three years.
