Ivana Bočková

* 1946

  • “My dad has saved himself, being a Jew and a communist, and he was dispatched, so at first he went to Italy, and from Italy to France, and via Portugal he reached England. He thus spent the war in England and thus he saved his life. My mother was a Catholic and so she did not have this problem. I think that she served in Tábor and later in Benešov, as a doctor, as far as I know. And that’s probably where her psychic problems developed. She suffered from serious insomnia and she underwent treatment and she was sinking into depression as a result of it, and what probably triggered it was that in Benešov she was treating women who had been raped by Russian soldiers. She was a Communist, and it was probably very hard for her to bear it, and this was probably one of the causes of her illness.”

  • “I started attending the first grade, but the StB State Security did a house search in our home two weeks later. At first they led away dad, he was summoned to give some explanation, but basically he has not come back. In 1952 a tragedy occurred in Liberec when the StB entered our house. My mom was suffering from quite serious mental and psychic issues, and she was undergoing treatment for that. And my grandpa Antonín Strejček and aunt Marie Jurková were living with us together in that house and they all committed suicide. They took me with them. Then they took me to hospital and I was the only one whom they saved.”

  • “Something that surprises me greatly: my mom had been expelled from the Communist Party. They [she and father] were both prewar members of the Party. One of them was a member since 1931, the other since 1933. And in spite of all these insane experiences, when both of them were expelled, and their member’s cards had been returned to them after I don’t know how many years… After her death, they expelled my mother from the Party, and all the time he has been trying to annul the decision, and to make them revoke their annulment of her membership. I am absolutely not able to grasp this. If they do something to me, the Party does something to me, and in spite of that, he was even still trying to get back into the Party. I am absolutely not able to understand this. They had to have this insanely great conviction that the Party was a wonderful thing.”

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    Praha, 30.01.2018

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    duration: 01:18:26
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Love, a good job, friends, nice people around you and the family

Ivana Bočková as a young woman
Ivana Bočková as a young woman
photo: archiv pamětníka

Ivana Bočková, née Horalová, was born on March 28, 1946 in Prague. Her parents Anežka and Andrej Horal were prewar members of the Communist Party and they lived in Liberec. In September 1952 her father was arrested based on falsified accusations and he unjustly spent nine months in a detention prison. During a night house search in the Horal family’s home, during which members of the StB security police were present, Ivana’s mother, aunt and grandfather committed collective suicide and she was given a lethal injection as well. However, doctors from Liberec were eventually able to save her. Ivana then lived with her relatives in Prague, and she completed her elementary school education there as well her study at the grammar school at Náměstí Míru Square in Prague. After two years of studying medicine, she eventually graduated from the Faculty of Arts at Charles University. She married in 1973 and she has two children. Ivana is now a widow and she lives in Prague 4 and takes care of her stepmother, who is more than 100 years old and who lives in the retirement home in the Hagibor neighbourhood in Prague.