Věra Lukášová

"The union organized some atheist talk after two o'clock in the afternoon. A speaker came who was totally unprepared and uneducated. He didn't know anything at all - about the Bible, about religion, about the Church, just platitudes and cheap phrases. Attendance was compulsory, so we all sat there. Many of the people who worked there were Catholics, but they didn't announce it anywhere. But everybody knew that my husband was a parish priest. And when it was beyond all measure, I joined the debate, I won the debate, and then I dissolved the debate because I had to go get my kids, my get my son in preschool. The consequence was that the headmaster didn't want me there anymore and he dismissed me very quickly. And as the stories go, I've never had strep throat in my life, but that time in that protection period I got a festering strep throat, so the headmaster had to pay me even longer than the agreed period of temporary work. But the result was that I absolutely couldn't find a job anymore."

"There were services at nine o'clock in the morning. Jenda had a dark suit and a suitcase with a gown and I walked two steps behind him because he walked fast and I was always trailing behind him. And now we were walking, and the streets were deserted, just these arrows and no names. We walked into this desolate landscape and suddenly it was like a Greek fable. All of a sudden, figures started popping out of the ground - it was the Russian army that had a sort of encampment there, and as we advanced in the road, they appeared in front of us. I froze in terror, but my husband went on, step by step, until we came to a little church and there were three or four ladies standing there. Jenda was saying to them, 'Don't be afraid,' and they said, 'Why, we are going to church!' There was this chapel across the street and in front of it was a Russian soldier with a rifle. So we went into the church and left the door open. It was perhaps the first Protestant service that he 'saw' with his ears."

“One day Mr Novotný [the director Jaroslav Novotný - ed.] told me: ‘Věrka, come with me, we have to go to the labs [in the Zlín film studios - ed.]. They phoned to say they have something there they don’t know what to do about.’ So we went there and saw the travelogue. Then we came back and Mr Novotný dictated a letter for me to write. It was addressed to Jiří Hanzelka and Miroslav Zikmund. What we saw were the very first travelogues they had shot. They were completely untrained, they could just about take pictures, but they hadn’t a clue about film cameras. They’d gotten the camera because they had an agreement with the Ministry of Education that if they’d be travelling the world, the might as well shoot films that could be used for lessons at school. Let me note that Hanzelka and Zikmund prepared for their journey in autumn 1947, so they left while Czechoslovakia was still a free country. But the whole of their journey took place after the Communist coup. So we sat there, and Mr Novotný dictated that letter, which I’ll never forget. He wrote: ‘You have an amazing opportunity. But please, you really can’t do things like that. You have to choose one topic, you can’t just shoot everything you come across. You have to start slowly and then perhaps capture some motion. You have to record the overall scene and then go into detail. You can’t keep flashing the camera here and there, you also have to stop for a bit and let the viewers see what you’re showing them.’ We sent the letter and were very curious as to the answer. If they had been snobbish and proud, they’d have said: ‘Don’t tell us how to do things!’ But they were very wise, and they wrote: ‘Thank you, and please write to us and spare us not.’”

“But then one afternoon [at the bank - ed.] they announced an atheistic propaganda [workshop]. It was mandatory, we all had to go there. And the person who came to lecture - nothing against him being an atheist - but he should have been educated and prepared. But all he knew were some shallow phrases, nothing else. We got into a debate. Everyone knew I was a parson’s wifem I couldn’t stay silent. Kroměříž is a Catholic city, the summer residence of the archbishop, a Catholic power house. So I spoke up in the debate, and of course I won the debate. Then I ended [the workshop - ed.], I said: ‘I can’t discuss any longer, I have to pick the children up from nursery school.’ [After this - ed.] they didn’t extend my temporary contract, of course, they fired me. And I couldn’t find any job at all. But I really needed work because pastors earned six hundred crowns a month back then. Every cleaning lady earned more than that. But low wages, that was a tactic of the Communist party, to dissuade people from studying theology. You won’t go study theology when it’ll earn you six hundred crowns. That was borderline poverty.”

“The world started anew once again because they invited my husband to accept the post of parson here in Jarov. And he said yes. So we moved. Everything is complicated for me. What I say is: ‘Stories happen and I bump into them.’ I married three weeks after the currency reform. We had no money. When we moved, it was 21 August 1968. Our moving van drove to Prague along with the Soviet tanks. With two children, with everything we had, which were mostly books, we moved to Prague.’”