Ludmila Voříšková

* 1948

  • "I used to copy the Charter, hand it out to my friends, but I did not sign it. My brother wanted to sign it, somewhere he just... I don't remember whom he met, and he came home and told my mother he was going to sign the Charter the next day. And my mum, my mum, I don't remember her crying in my whole life, and my mum was crying and saying, 'They're going to arrest you and I can't bear it any more.' So he didn't go and sign it. So I have to say that nobody in my neighbourhood or in my family signed the Charter."

  • "A uniformed policeman came and told my mother to come to the prison in Pankrác. And my mum said, 'Is my husband sick or injured?' And he said, 'Madam, I don't know, I was only supposed to tell you this.' He might not have known really. Well, as I said, we were holding on to my mum's skirt, so we all went to Pankrác. We live just a short distance from the prison. And there, my mother just asked some of the guards there or whatever he was. She said she had been invited to come there and that she thought Dad was sick or injured or something. And he said, 'I don't know, I've got to ask.' I remember that, because even when I was such a little child, it was a strong experience. So he went to ask somebody and then he said, 'Ma'am, you're wrong, he's dead.' That's how they announced a death when somebody died in prison."

  • "As far as I can remember in Vinařice, there was a table like this, there was my father sitting there, behind him was a warden, and we were sitting here, but we weren't allowed to touch each other, nothing. One visit must have been after Christmas, because we hadn´t eaten these [chocolate] figures of the box, these hollow chocolate ones. Well, that's when Mum asked the warden if we could give them to Dad. He consented, but we had to give it to the warden and he crushed it in front of us like that. Well, and you know, [I was a] little girl, I started crying in there, and that visit turned out very badly."

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    Praha , 11.05.2022

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    duration: 55:27
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    Praha, 05.08.2022

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    duration: 01:03:14
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We were afraid that one day even my mum wouldn’t come home from work

Ludmila Voříšková in her youth
Ludmila Voříšková in her youth
photo: Witness´s archive

Ludmila Voříšková was born on 24 September 1948 in Prague. Her parents worked in the Catholic publishing house Vyšehrad. Ludmila’s father Rudolf Voříšek was a Catholic thinker and philosopher. After the February coup, the Communists dissolved the publishing house and in 1951 her father Rudolf Voříšek was arrested and sentenced to 11 years imprisonment. He went through the Vinařice prison near Kladno and the Bytíz labour camp near Příbram. In November 1953, he died of leukaemia in prison. His children were not allowed to study at university because of their bad cadre assessment. Ludmila joined a language school as a secretary in 1967, later she changed many jobs. She welcomed the Velvet Revolution but then faced problems finding employment. This led to her mental breakdown and subsequently to a disability pension.