"I was an exception who did not join the Communist Party at JAMU. I wasn't in the party and therefore they didn't want to count me. And then the coup happened [in November 1989] and they came to me and persuaded me to be rector. And because I didn't join the party, they wanted to elect me. They were coming to me and doing some signature actions to get me to do it. And when it piled up so much, from those students, I said I guess I can't say no. So I went for it, and I was elected rector three times in a row. The first time was only for a year, it was some other law. Then it changed, so I was again, for three years, and then again for three years. So I did a lot of work. It must be boasted that when I inherited the school, I inherited one building, and it was in a rather desolate condition in Janáček Square. And when I finished, I had four buildings renovated, I got much bigger premises for the school. It was quite difficult, but it helped the school a lot to get those teaching spaces - we couldn't stay so much behind Prague, so much behind. I'm quite proud of the fact that this has been achieved."
"They didn't feel like talking about it. But I know my mother said she met a soldier once who was guarding them and he offered, in a good way, 'If you want, I'll shoot you,' as if he was doing her a favour. So she wouldn't have to worry anymore. These are unreal situations."
"At Buchenwald it was a bit more bearable, relatively speaking, than at Ravensbrück. They even had a prison quartet there, because my father was very fond of chamber music. So I even sent them sheet music so they could play there, the prison quartet. But the women's camp was much worse. When my father came back, my mother was still gone. We waited a long time, about a month, before she even showed up. It was bad there."
"I remember coming home one day and seeing a big car in front of our house. I immediately realized it was the Gestapo, but I didn't think I shouldn't go there. Well, they took my parents away, robbed what they could and left me there, alone. So I ran down the street to where my professor lived. I was studying at the conservatory at the time. So I went to the professor and told him what happened. Different friends took care of me and I went to different friends for lunch, they took care of me, my friends. Well, I had a pretty tough life at the time. It wasn't fun."
Alena Štěpánková Veselá was born on 7 July 1923 in Brno to Helena and Vítězslav Veselý. Her father was an academic professor, a renowned chemist and - among others - a friend of the later Nobel Prize winner Jaroslav Heyrovský. During the Second World War, Alena Štěpánková Veselá studied organ at the Brno Conservatory. At the beginning of 1944, Gestapo officers came for both parents because of their family connection to the anti-Nazi resistance fighter Harry Freund. This was followed by deportation to concentration camps - mother was imprisoned by the Nazis in Ravensbrück until the end of the war, father in Buchenwald. Both survived the horrors of the Holocaust. After the war, Alena Veselá joined the newly established (1947) Brno JAMU, where she also taught from the 1950s. In 1954 she married, and together with her husband Mirek Štěpánek they raised their daughter Helena. As a trained organist she gave concerts in many places in Europe and beyond. She managed to travel regularly to the free West through her profession, even though she never joined the Communist Party (KSČ). In 1990, she became the first post-revolutionary rector of JAMU. She held the post until 1997 and from her position she was instrumental in the reconstruction and expansion of the academic premises. In 2013, her autobiographical book From the Registers of Memory was published, and in 2020 she received a state award, the Medal of Merit, First Class. In 2023 she was living in her native Brno.
Alena Štěpánková Veselá with her parents and brother Karel on a walk in the valley of the Svratka River. Today the place is flooded by the Brno dam. Year 1928
Alena Štěpánková Veselá with her parents and brother Karel on a walk in the valley of the Svratka River. Today the place is flooded by the Brno dam. Year 1928
