Bachelor Ingrid Kejkrtová

* 1964

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  • "I just remember the moment I grabbed the microphone and said, 'Oh no, we're just not going! We don't quite mean it like that, but we've agreed with the other universities that the occupation strike is on and going.' That's really when it took off. I just remember going to the rector's collegium with Mr. Bělohoubek and Honza Riegert, where we started to negotiate on behalf of the students."

  • "If we regard 17 November at Národní as the beginning, and that's what it really was, the students of DAMU and Martin Mejstřík and those schools in particular decided to go on an occupation strike on the 18th. On Sunday the strike committees were elected at VŠZ, so for us directly it started on the 19th. I was living below Karlovo náměstí at the time. On the twentieth there was was the first 'Sundial' and then it was every day." - "What does that mean, Sundial?" - "It's actually a sundial with steps where we used to meet every day and tell the students the information we got from the center, from DISK. In our school, just like in all schools, we were transcribing, people were bringing us food, drinks, sending donations. I even got a few letters from cooperatives expressing their support. So it was pretty much like all the other schools."

  • "I got into a proper school for the first time in 1987, which I was very happy about and thought I would finish. But I'm the kind of person who interacts with people a lot, so the StB got in touch again and started asking questions specifically about other students in my year. First, of course, they summoned me to Bartolomějská and that's when you start to feel bad, it was a strange time. I was from a family that had experienced 1968, 1969 and also 1948, and you didn't know what was going to happen. It was really uncomfortable, so because I didn't know the math that well, and they kept persuading me to cooperate, I didn't know how to get out of it, so I decided to interrupt my studies, which didn't help me much. They promised to help me with my math. I went back in 1989."

  • Full recordings
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    Praha, 26.09.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:19:48
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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I grabbed the microphone and said we weren’t going to study, joinint the strike instead

Ingrid Kejkrtová during the student strike in November 1989
Ingrid Kejkrtová during the student strike in November 1989
photo: Ingrid Kejkrtová's archive

Ingrid Kejkrtová was born in Michalovce, Slovakia on 26 December 1964 into a Czech medical family but was not allowed to study medicine because her father emigrated to West Germany in 1968. She grew up in Prague-Bubeneč. In 1985 she completed an evening high school and started working at the University of Agriculture (VŠZ) in Prague as a secretary. Her comments about the communist elections in June 1986 earned her to her first interrogation by the State Security. She was then dismissed from her job, after which she entered the zero year at the VŠZ and worked as a canteen assistant. In 1987, she was accepted to study at the Faculty of Operations and Economics, but interrupted her studies soon as the StB began to force her to collaborate. Between August 1987 and April 1989, the StB kept her in the ‘confidant’ category. She returned to the school in the autumn of 1989 and after the crackdown on Národní třída she took part in leading the strike at the VŠZ. Following November 1989, she founded a family business with her husband and became involved in municipal politics in Prague 6. From 1995 to 1999, she worked at the Prague 6 municipal office as a press spokeswoman, and then as an assistant in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic (PSP ČR) and as a press spokeswoman for Chair of PSP ČR Miroslava Němcová. In 2001, she was elected to the Prague 6 City Council for Unie svobody, and from 2007 until the time of the filming in 2019, she held various positions at the Prague 6 City Council.