People who used to greet our father crossed the street after 1948
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Vlasta Stádníková was born in Prague on 24 February 1933 to the family of ministerial councillor Bohumil Kofroň. She grew up in Terronská Street in Dejvice where her family lived in a house inhabited mostly by the employees of the Ministries of the Interior and Justice. At the end of World War II, she witnessed the departure of the German army nad the abuse of German civilians. She began studying at the St. Voršila Girls’ Grammar School in Prague in 1945. In 1947, the Ministry of Justice where her father worked was hit by the ‘parcel affair’: three non-Communist ministers, including Minister of Justice Prokop Drtina, received parcel bombs. The assassination attempt was likely plotted by the communists. Bohumil Kofroň was charged with investigating the incident. He was dismissed from the Ministry immediately after the Communists came to power on 25 February 1948. Vlasta Stádníková graduated from high school but was not admitted to medical school and found a job at the Institute of Physical Medicine. In 1954 she met her future husband, sculptor Karel Stádník. A graduate of Otakar Španiel’s studio at the Academy of Fine Arts, he did not want to work on pro-regime sculpture commissions, so he worked as a restorer in the 1950s. (The recording is incomplete due to the witness’s indisposition.)
