Magdalena Levinská

* 1936

  • "We were crying, my reaction was terrible. I feared there would be a war, that is what we feared the most. I survived one war. Well, what I feared most about my husband was that he was there day and night in the shaft. They did there, I don't know what they did there, the strikes or what it was, I don't know so far if there was a strike. Even the workers defended themselves, you know. They didn't know what awaited them to close their shaft, which is the other side of the matter. The husband worked at the one called Hlubina. Otherwise, we must live on, no matter the times. There is nothing that can be done, we just have to deal with it."

  • "The husband worked in Jáchymov for ten years, but because his brother was a political prisoner and he had to move in because of him, he didn't have to, but he wanted to be close to his brother. They both spent ten years there; my brother as a prisoner and my husband as a worker, a miner. After that in 1960s the Jáchymov mines were cancelled and closed down. Novotný came, so he gave an amnesty."

  • "We were in Yugoslavia for the first time in 1969. And before that we were in the the Eastern Germany and otherwise it was... In 1980 I got to Italy, it was hard enough to get, but only I was the lucky one, not my husband. I was escorted by a lady, so we got there. Let me tell you, it was a big shock for me, because I saw the shops and everything there and I came home and saw as if there was black flurid in the shop. That disappointed me for the first time. But differently, as we did after the communists, we went through our socialist states like this, and otherwise not, otherwise we were abroad, only by accident I managed to get out in 1980. Italy, France, we travelled through it all. Germany."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Ostrava, 14.12.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:15:41
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Everything can be survived

Magdalena Levinská (en)
Magdalena Levinská (en)
photo: Paměť národa

Magdalena Levinská, a single Targová, was born on July 11, 1936 in the village of Kolinovce in Slovakia. Her husband worked in Jáchymov as a miner, they met in Slovakia, where he moved to work after the mines ceased to exist. He worked in Jáchymov to be close to his brother, who was sentenced to life in prison for political reasons (he was originally sentenced to death). He was released after 1960, when the president Antonín Novotný declared an extensive amnesty. In 1964, Magdalena and her husband and children moved to Ostrava, where she lived while filming the interview (2021).