Lenka Honnerová

* 1956

  • “It has been spreading as an avalanche that the Plastic People will play here. Not only they played the kind of music they did which was popular at the time but most of all they were actively engaged against the regime and that appealed to that part of the population. We needed to rebel against the regime, even though by such means. And the people understood how bad the situation was, that it just could not be, that they have been holding us here like in prison, that they haven´t been teaching us history, that there were the occupiers who we eating us out of house and home, as the Russians didn´t send them money for sure. We knew that our products and our uranium was being sent to Russia without compensation. We needed to do something and this hasn´t been much but at least it was something. And we knew half of the country would be there. So we... We learned about it maybe less than fourteen days in advance and how many of us gathered there before they started playing. Maybe they didn´t even start playing as I ran away as the police began... I saw them pushing people back into the buses using batons. And I made run for it, I ran away. My father warned me, he won´t let me out and he knew but he didn´t tell me what was going to happen. Maybe he felt stupid for how the things were. He was almost hanging himself at home so I wouldn´t leave. In the end I left but I remembered what he told me so I ran away in time. I am wondering whether I was a coward like the others.”

  • “We led a modest life. I am not complaining as there is some good in everything but it was a day to day fight. As when my third child was born: all my kids were born in the course of three years and a half so I have been suffering from bone decalcification and Kuba had the same issues. He was pasing water so fast and he needed to retain water in his body. When I took him to hospital, they told me: “Either you could get bananas which help to retain water and feed him bananas. Or you could leave him with us as we have got bananas.' Quite a choice, isn´t it? To leave a ten day old baby in hospital where I wouldn't be allowed to go and couldn´t be breastfeeding him. They won´t let you stay in hospital with your baby in those days. Even a ten-day old had to stay alone in the hospital. And there were no bananas, they just could not be found. As I had been working as a shop assistant in Družba I had friends there. But it was half a year since I left my job there and as I was on maternal leave all the time I had not right to have bananas. They told me they didn´t have any. But I knew they do have them all the time. I worked there and I saw how it worked. It was for important people and their friends only. So I took Kuba and I ran into the warehouse as I knew the place and I told them they will give me bananas. So I left with bananas. But I couldn´t go there, as an ordinary customer I wouldn't get the bananas... And she would have to leave a ten-day old baby... I know that´s no tragedy. He would survive. But today people just can´t imagine such a thing as today if the child is six years or younger you can stay in the hospital."

  • “On Saturday there was fifteen of us and on Sunday hundred people came. And on Monday the square was filled with people or at least more than half of it as it was during the latest protest. But they started to speak publicly. There were students speaking. Pithart has come here, Havel has come here. And I went... I have been working at the pub so at five in the evening I went to work. At ten I would leave the job and I went... I had a car. Only few people could give up a car to the cause back then. So I have been visiting colleges where students were printing leaflets, printing... They were writing! You won´t hear it nowadays, to write on a typewriter. They would write all day and I would distribute it, there were two or three of us who were coming at night for the material. We would bring it to the theatre and with the actors we were distributing the leaflets, posting them up and throwing them in the mailboxes. And we would guard what we had posted as the secret police would tear it down. So it would survive until morning. We have been pasting the leaflets on shop windows and there were some brave shop managers who would put post it on the inside. But there were just few of them as people were still afraid back then.”

  • After I got married and started to experience the ordinary troubles of a family life, I began to realise what it took to get a flat. What it took to get a flat when your sister is in Austria. And what it took to get a flat with heating. As there were the requirements one had to meet to get a gas heating: one had to have three or more children, health problems and had to be a party member. I wasn´t a party member. So I wasn´t entitled to have a heating. I had to heat the flat with diesel which had gone up in price at that time. My income was 700 crowns a month and I spent 500 crowns on diesel so I could heat the flat. So I started to rebel for real. I took my kids and I led them to the Local National Committee where I left them in an office of the lady who decided these cases and I told her as it it warm there I would come to feed the kids because I could not afford to pay for both. And I left. So they... I cried a lot for sure. And I was afraid, of course I was, fearing what was to come. But they brought the kids back with a list of forty flats in which I could move. As they could not install the gas heating because they already refused my request for several times. So they offered me flats in which there already was a heating.

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    České Budějovice, 20.05.2019

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I was the first one to go to the square

Lenka Honnerová in 1974
Lenka Honnerová in 1974
photo: archiv Lenky Honnerové

Lenka Honnerová né Pittnerová was born on September 5th 1956 in Pardubice to the family of an officer and ardent communist party member. In 1960 she moved with her family to České Budějovice. Her father´s career was affected by his older daughter leaving for Austria in 1969 and later emigrating emigrating officially. Lenka Honnerová worked as a shop assistant and a waitress, since the 70s she attended tea parties where foreign records were being played be the latter political prisoner Jiří Gans. In Spring of 1974 she went to see the Plastic People of the Universe band performing in nearby Rudolfov, however the gig had been banned and hundreds of fans who came to see the performance were beaten up by the police. Later Lenka married and gave birth to three children. In November 1989 she organised protests taking place at the main square in České Budějovicd and was also one of the event´s first participants. Today she works as a cleaning lady for an Austrian family and gathers the material aid that she distributes in the refugee camps.