Dana Foukalová

* 1970

  • “Petr (Petr Holubář - auth.’s note) received a promissory certificate to be able to exchange foreign currency and he met Karel Kryl in Germany and he brought some documents from him. He even laughed about it, he allegedly carried them hidden in a box of washing powder. His trip to Germany coincided with some protest rally in Prague to which I went. I do not remember it at all. I only remember that we were spread over the entire train. The older guys had it all well thought out, like Staňa (Stanislav Devátý – auth.’s note), Trcek (Vladimír Trlida – auth.’s note) Pavel Jungmann, Petr Bartoš. I was still inexperienced as a puppy. They had it all planned, including the seats on the train so that at least somebody would be able to get to Prague if arrests took place. I was therefore not in the same train car with them. I was travelling as if by myself with a camera. I was naive to take a camera to a protest rally. Of course they took it away from me there. I think that nobody took me seriously. They just saw a girl, I was eighteen. How could they possibly view me? They probably thought that I was there just by coincidence and that I just went to have a look. Nobody could take me seriously at that time. I was simply a girlfriend of Petr (Petr Holubář - auth.’s note) who was in the group of people around SPUSA and Charter 77.”

  • “The old man – Mira Odložil – will know that. I know that they led us down from the mountain range to the opposite side of the mountain than the one where we had parked our car, because we then had to get back to the car with difficulties and we had to hitchhike. I really don’t like to remember it, although nothing happened. I don’t want to pose as a hero, saying that they had beaten us. No, it was not like this. They separated us and armed men walked in between us. I don’t know whether they were policemen. There were people in civilian clothes as well as the border guards with submachine guns and dogs without muzzles. It took us a long time to walk down to the valley. They separated us and a man with a dog walked behind each of us. We were not able to talk and an armed soldier with a dog was walking in front of you and another dog was breathing at your back. As I said, I was basically still a child.”

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    Zlín, 12.10.2017

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Life is in our hands

Dana Krejčí (Foukalová)
Dana Krejčí (Foukalová)
photo: archiv pamětnice

Dana Foukalová, née Krejčí, was born February 13, 1970 in the then Gottwaldov (present-day Zlín). After completing elementary school she studied a vocational school to become a machinery engineer and she apprenticed in the state-owned company Svit Gottwaldov. It was here that she met Petr Holubář, who was six years older and who belonged to the group of people around Stanislav Devátý who were openly protesting against the totalitarian communist regime. Seventeen-year-old Dana joined in as well. Among other events, she participated in laying wreaths to the monument of killed American aviators which was organized by SPUSA (Society of Friends of the USA), an opposition organization founded by dissidents from Zlín, or she attended a protest rally against the political regime in Prague in 1988. On August 5, 1989, together with Petr Holubář and Miroslav Odložil, she went to the Králický Sněžník Mountain located at the state border and they were to meet with Polish dissidents and exchange samizdat documents with them. However, instead of the Polish activists, men armed with loaded submachine guns and accompanied by ready-to-attack German shepherds jumped out of the shrubs. This was followed by an arrest, a long trek down the mountain, an all-night interrogation and then eventually by a release of Dana and her friends. In March 1990, shortly after the fall of the communist regime, Dana Krejčí married Petr Holubář and they invited Stanislav Devátý as their best man. They had son Petr and daughter Mitchell. Dana and Petr divorced in 1999. Dana later married Vladimír Foukal and she moved to him to the village Tečovice. They had daughter Alena. Her former husband Petr Holubář suddenly died of bone cancer in 2016. Dana was living in Tečovice in 2017.