"They were blackmailing and making things up. Blackmailing how? They burned the Vratík´s car. Vratík put his car together like the boys do, assembled an old car to run, and had it in front of his house. So they set it on fire. They pushed it into the Stromovka park, poured something on it and set it on fire. The firemen said it was done in a highly professional manner, that it couldn't have been done by an ordinary person. I wondered who did it, right? They locked Olda up and beat him so bad they couldn't let him go home. He was covered in bruises and they waited for the bruises to come off. They wanted to send Jarda to the mines. Jarda refused. The staff manager called him several times a day to tell him he should go to the mines. "And similar 'favours'."
"We used to take the company bus downhill. One day it stopped halfway up the hill and my friend said to me, 'Marie, come on, let's get off!' There was a Volha car behind us, following me, a green one like a frog. They had just overtaken the bus because the bus had stopped. We jumped off the bus and hid in a house. Because we wanted to visit Otka Bednářova and we didn't need the cops to follow us. Otka had just come back from prison. The Volha was driving up and down, looking for us, didn't find us. We took a taxi and went to Otka's place. They stood with the Volha in front of our house waiting for me to come back. When they were sure I was home, they left. They harassed me, they wanted to take the elevator with me. I called my husband that the state Security man was bothering me, so he went down and the man calmed down. The next day they followed us. We got off the bus, changed at Sokolovská Street to the underground. He went and was kicking me."
"There were four tanks in front of the building, and the officers got out and said they were going to go into the building. They didn't get in, we locked up. The cannons of the tanks started pointing at the door, all four of them, they were going to shoot it. So we unlocked what we could we do... A soldier or an officer came in, with a machine gun, sprayed it all with a machine gun, shot it all up, there's a balcony, maybe there are still traces. He shot it all around, we were standing downstairs. They said we had to leave, so we went to our offices. We would have had to go there anyway, because we had the teletype and everything, the connection with the republic. That's where we worked in the office."
"So I was trying for a while to tell them what I thought. They wouldn't let me speak and started to question me. And I said, 'You're silly fools, I'm not talking to you.' I took my coat and left. But I had a problem. I was there on a pass, and who was going to sign my pass? And then, being a sekretariat old hand, I realized I could sign it myself, so I signed it and left. That's how I ended up with the Central Committee. Now we were both fired. And they were doing it well, those comrades! Compared to them, we are losers. We were fired, we were broke, while later we fed them [the Communists] all velvety, and we still give them huge pensions. We were penniless. I didn't have enough for a tram sometimes. I went from here, from Kunčice, I had my children hidden here, I went to Prague. I arrived at the station at Sokolovská Street. I was so hungry. I had the last coins and I went to buy a sandwich and I missed a fifty pence. There was a gypsy woman selling in that shop. She saw I had no money and said, 'Madam, you can give it to me another time.' That was a gypsy! I often think of her. She was nice. We had to work a lot for living. We had a grandmother, she had a pension of 200 crowns. She had worked in the fields all her life. When she died, I got a letter they had raised her pension to 400. We weren't allowed to earn more than 1,500. That was somehow officially given by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. None of the communists who were fired, at least I think."
"My mother had said to me, 'Can´t they give you a salary?' But that changed after February, it did. They started to live differently, the party offices! So I was in that secretariat, I experienced the elections there. I still remember what the elections in Vrchlabí were like." - "Tell us." - "The Communists got 40% in Vrchlabí. The parties ran it differently then, it was a form of competition, where they competed over who could do more voluntary working hours. And it was written on the blackboard how much the National Socialists did, how much the Communists did. There were interesting things going on at the secretariat. I had no influence there, but I saw and heard it. Property things, like the mayor - shall I name him? I'd rather not. The mayor stole Persian carpets from the castle in Vrchlabí, a communist, of course. Then a jeep was driving down the main street, and the Social Democratic secretary was standing in it, shouting: 'Comrades, what did comrade so-and-so do? He stole carpets from the castle in Vrchlabí. ' This was before the elections. I had a chill down my spine, was it possible? I met my husband in Vrchlabí, at the secretariat. He was working underground and then, of course, he immediately joined the National Security Corps (SNB). He also had this idea that we were building a better world. He came to the secretariat and said he needed to write a list. So Nadˇka said, 'Máňa, write it down for him.' So I was writing it down for him. The list was entitled: List of gold objects found in the desk of Constable Skořepa (things taken from German women in the camp). The National Security Corps commander, my husband, while he was on duty he broke into his [constable´s] desk at night. I wrote a whole long page, two columns, about what he [the constable] had taken from those poor German women. They were taking everything from them, even the milk and butter they got for their children."
"I never heard them complain that we didn't have money. Never. And they always managed to make sure the family had enough to eat. As I say: vegetables from my mum, rabbits from my dad, potatoes, wheat and bread from the farmers,. A loaf of bread in those days cost, a big loaf, 8 crowns, I remember. And my mother worked all day in the fields to make 8 crowns. They [my parents] were great and sporty. My dad and I played football with the village boys, we had a kind of a pitch behind the fence, he taught me to swim. We used to go swimming in [the river] Cidlina, in [Nový] Bydžov. They were great. And they were sophisticated people. The interesting thing is that during the First Republic, all kinds of workers' associations existed, which promoted education. They were trying to uplift the working people a little bit. Nowadays, who cares about you? But on the other hand, if you want, you can find where you can educate yourself, but this was a way to cultivate workers. That's not just the case with my dad and my mom. I found that out later. If somebody trained to a machinist, they were equal to a secondary technical school graduate. Back then, those schools had high standard. Otherwise, Masaryk's republic, it gave us a hard time, in that respect. Well, there was a crisis. I had excellent parents. And handy. The peasants were competing to have them work in their fields because they were so skilful. And my mother? She sewed my clothes in hand, she didn't have a machine. And Dad, he could do everything. He made clogs for us when we didn't have shoes, he could do everything. He could make plum brandy when he needed to, when he didn't buy it, he could build a rabbit hutch, he could do bricklaying, he could do anything he laid his hands on."
Marie Hromádková, née Novotná, was born on 5 January 1930 in the village of Uhřičice near Kojetín. Her parents were members of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, poor but hard-working and skilful people. During the economic crisis, they found it difficult to find work; their father František found it in Nový Bydžov in a button factory, while their mother Marie worked in the fields. During the war, her father, as a communist, escaped arrest by the Gestapo by signing up for work in Germany; before the end of the war he managed to escape home. After the war, the family took the opportunity to move to the borderlands and acquire a family house in Kunčice nad Labem, near Vrchlabí. At the age of fifteen, Marie Hromádková joined the local Communist Party and began working mainly with the youth. She married Oldřich Hromádko, a member of the National Security Corps (SNB) from Vrchlabí, also a communist. After graduating from workers’ preparation course, they both studied in Prague, Marie in the history of the workers’ movement at the University of Political and Economic Sciences, Oldřich at the military academy. This was followed by work in Olomouc and later in Bruntál. Marie began to study at the party college by distance learning and worked in various party functions. At the beginning of the 1960s, the couple returned to Prague. Both were strongly influenced in their political views and attitudes by the revelation of the cult of personality at the XXth Congress of the Comunist Party of the Soviet Union. Here began their journey into the opposition that was taking shape within the party. Marie worked in Prague 6 in party functions as secretary for industry, was involved in the revival process of the 1960s and was expelled from the party during the party checks after the August 1968 occupation. She found it difficult to find work, as did her husband. Both were involved in opposition activities. Both Marie and Oldřich were among the first signatories of Charter 77. Frequent interrogations, searches and detentions followed. The whole family, including their sons, participated in the copying and distribution of samizdat. In January 1980, Marie became one of the spokespersons for Charter 77. Four years later, she retired and moved back to Kunčice. She organized the first two meetings of the Charter signatories and participated in the work of the Charter speakers’ team. Her husband died in 2002. Marie Hromádková died on April 22, 2024.
Professor Jiří Hájek's 70th birthday party, from left Jiří Hájek, Oldřich Hromádko, Václav Malý, Bedřich Placák, Marie Hromádková wearing glasses, Jiřina Rumlová, Marie Valachová, Miloš Rejchrt, below left Jakub Ruml, Jiří Ruml, Prague 1983
Professor Jiří Hájek's 70th birthday party, from left Jiří Hájek, Oldřich Hromádko, Václav Malý, Bedřich Placák, Marie Hromádková wearing glasses, Jiřina Rumlová, Marie Valachová, Miloš Rejchrt, below left Jakub Ruml, Jiří Ruml, Prague 1983
Marie Hromádková's family after the funeral of her mother Marie Novotná, seated from the left Marie and Oldřich Hromádko, father František Novotný, standing sons, Kunčice, around 1950
Marie Hromádková's family after the funeral of her mother Marie Novotná, seated from the left Marie and Oldřich Hromádko, father František Novotný, standing sons, Kunčice, around 1950
A group of father's friends - button makers, communists - all died in concentration camps. From left: mother Františka Novotná, below: children Marie and her brother, Zábědov 1936
A group of father's friends - button makers, communists - all died in concentration camps. From left: mother Františka Novotná, below: children Marie and her brother, Zábědov 1936
Soldiers in the parade on 1 May, Vrchlabí 1946
The army was supposed to be apolitical, here the soldiers appear with a political slogan on their own initiative
Soldiers in the parade on 1 May, Vrchlabí 1946
The army was supposed to be apolitical, here the soldiers appear with a political slogan on their own initiative
