“I somehow managed at home but what was worse were the visits to the Gestapo. A guy known for beating prisoners would open the door for me. Whenever the door shut I felt trapped. I couldn’t visit him but I was allowed to write to him. I hadn’t seen him for all of the four months. Once the Gestapo officer told me not to even think about writing to him because they were tired of reading those long letters of mine. They made it easy for themselves. My husband was only allowed to send me postcards saying: ‘I am doing well.’ That was all.”
“Airplanes were flying over Zlín towards the Polish basin. They would always announce it with bells, followed by sirens and then alarm. By that time I would always run with my kids towards the forest. We had lived in the square but the forest was close by. I would shout at one of my boys: ‘Run, run!’ while carrying the other one on my back. On the day of the big shelling it appeared that nothing would happen so we returned home but then it began. We hid in the basement, the whole house was shaking and it was fairly unpleasant. The rubber factory which we could see from our fourth floor was also hit. For all of the following week black smoke was rising from it. My kids who knew nothing about war said just: ‘They don’t tend the fire well…’”
“My son was always whined about having to draw a picture ‘long live this and that person’ and that he was out of ideas. So I always told him: ‘You know what, draw Hradčany with clouds above them and perhaps some boats down on Vltava river. And just add somewhere in the corner: ‘Long live…’”
Linda Wichterlová, née Zahradníková, was born on 18 August 1917 in Prostějov. Her family were very active in many fields such as community theatre, tennis or winter sports. In the summer they would go for a retreat in Stražisko where Linda Wichterlová spends her summers to this day. This is also where she met her future husband, a renowned chemist and inventor Otto Wichterle. Soon after their wedding in 1938 the war broke out. They had spent it in Zlín where Otto Wichterle worked in Baťa’s company chemical research. After the war they moved to Prague where she finished her dentistry studies. Because of the then lack of dentists, she was able to graduate preliminarily. Ever since 1961 she collaborated with her husband in contact lens development because he was forced to move his research home for lack of funding. In 1968 both of them had signed the Two Thousand Words manifesto. Linda Wichterlová lived in Prague and Stražisko. She died on November 24th, 2023.
