Marcela Jirásková

* 1952

  • "Well, then I started going to school, but in the first grade it wasn't very good because I got a teacher, maybe I can say that today, because she's probably long since dead. The teacher's name was Vlasta Písecká, I remember to this day. And the teacher bullied me a lot - today it's called bullying, so she bullied and humiliated me. I had to stand at the step every morning, I wasn't allowed to sit at my desk. The teacher came, sniffed me to see if I smelled and when she found out that I didn't smell and that I was clean, I could sit in the pew. I sat in the back pew and no one was allowed to sit in front of me and not next to me either. Well, because it was because my father was a chimney sweeper and a teacher thought that our dad came home from work dirty, but he really washed every time, so I could have been dirty too. And because it was in the fifties or earlier in those years and it was still that rigid or there was communism. So there was such an institution and it was called pou personal committee of the communist party of the Czechoslovakia. And those were the kind of ladies who didn't go to work because their husbands were directors of something and were the true communists. And they, because at that time no comrade could not go to work, it was not socialist, it was not worthy of a socialist woman not to go to work. So they compensated for the job by being street committees and taking care of the cleanliness and proper development of the others. So the teacher Písecká sent the street committee to us. The ladies came, rang the bell, opened the cupboards, looked in our drawers, checked if the dad was taking a bath or where he was sleeping. And when they found out that he was sleeping normally in a bed covered with white sheets, they were terribly surprised, because they thought that just because he got dirty at work, he was always dirty. Well, dad arrived during their visit and got very upset. He banished the ladies. And it was bad, because it was already a political crime, he acted against political power. And the only thing that saved us that time was that he was a chimney sweep and his great passion was fishing. And he built almost all the ponds or repaired all the ponds in Slané and the surrounding area. And he worked as a housekeeper for fishermen. And his friend was a certain Miloslav Frolík, I called him Uncle Milda, but he wasn't an uncle either. And he was with the state police. I don't know why, I've never seen him sympathize with or praise that party in my life. He was just cursing like all the others, but he was just at the secret police and at that time somehow he stood up for our

  • "And for about the next three or four days, the situation was such that they said: 'Neither water nor bread for the Russians! Go back to Kiev!' There were slogans like that. Well, the Russians solved it by capturing a lot of people after Slané. Someone from each plant. And because they were late and my mother still had to clean the communal house, the Russians broke into the communal house and found only a cleaning lady there, so they took our mother, locked her up somewhere in the National Committee, declared martial law in Slané, and as I told you, Brožovského street; here was the theater and here was the pub Na Střelně, so there were tanks facing each other like that, that whole street and no one was allowed to go out day or night. We had to stay locked up and they threatened that if they didn't get food and water they would shoot the people they captured on that committee. So we had mom until about the next day, or I don't know if it was just overnight, I think it was sort of... or just until the next day, because immediately of course there were a lot of people, so the water was given to them, and these cisterns were pulled up on Háje and there the Russians camped and got this. And again, it was at a time when there were no mobile phones. We didn't know anything at all and we couldn't even stick our noses out of that barrack and then we didn't know what was going on with our mother. We just got a hint, our dad got a message from a friend that we have mom on the committee house, that they took her here with them."

  • "Here we are in Slané in Kreibichova Street, and there used to be a series of houses that were once built by some factory worker. And those houses were amazing by being connected in the basements and in the attics. So there were a lot of us children living there and we experienced a kind of a Foglarian childhood actually, because it was terribly mysterious. Because when you're in the first house—there were about eight of those houses in a row like that—and when you ran out into the attic in that first house and went down there and ran into the cellar, you came back around it nicely. And all the backyards were connected. And in those backyards there were various sheds, laundromats, kennels and stuff like that. So we really had a wonderful time there as children."

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    Velvary, 09.02.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 01:09:03
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Comrades, I have forty children, I cannot join the party

Marcela Jirásková (en)
Marcela Jirásková (en)
photo: archiv pamětnice

Marcela Jirásková was born on August 4, 1952 in Prague, but she spent her entire childhood in Slané, where her father, a chimney sweep, got a service apartment. She learned horticulture and wanted to continue her studies at university, but the school principal did not give her a recommendation. She spent August 1968 in Černuč and Kralupy nad Vltavou helping to distribute anti-occupation newspapers. In 1980, when she was at home with her young daughter, she started leading the free-time science club Javory for children, which still operates today. She refused to join the Communist Party of the Czech Republic and was interrogated by the StB due to accusations of influencing the youth. In 2022, she lived in the village of Černuc in the region of Kladno.