On 13 April 1952, State Security came for the whole family
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Marta Měšt’anová, née Hrabinská, was born on 3 July 1932 in Pilsen. Her father worked as a technical clerk in Škoda factory, her mother stayed at home. Due to her father’s employment, her parents soon moved to Adamov, where Marta’s younger sister Stanislava was born in 1934. In Adamov during the war they experienced the bombing of the town and the liberation by the Red Army. In 1947, the family returned to Pilsen so that both sisters could study at secondary schools - Marta at the business academy, Stanislava at the grammar school. After the Communists took power in February 1948, and under the influence of Western radio and reading about the conditions in the Soviet Union, father Stanislav decided to somehow stir up the public. From 1949 onwards, he wrote and reproduced verse anti-communist leaflets at home, which were distributed around Pilsen by his daughters, his wife Anna and family friend Anežka Vosíková. In addition, he bought a spray gun and painted communist slogans, posters and agitation boxes with different colours. At the beginning of April 1952 he was caught in the act by the police and on 13 April 1952 State Security came for the rest of the family. Marta, then employed as a clerk, spent several months in solitary confinement in State Security interrogation rooms in Plzeň. The trial of the group Stanislav Hrabinský and associates took place on 2 October 1952 in Plzeň. It sentenced Stanislav’s father to 20 years in prison for association against the republic, Anežka Vosíková to 18 years, his wife Anna to two years, Marta and Stanislava to seven months. All of them also forfeited all their property to the state. Both sisters were released after the trial due to the length of their detention, but after an appeal by the district prosecutor, the Regional Court in Plzeň increased Marta’s sentence to nine months. She spent another two months in the Plzeň prison working in a tailor’s shop. After returning from prison, she and her sister lived with their grandmother. They both had to work manually in a factory for a year before they found better jobs. Her mother was released in 1952 on amnesty, while her father and Anežka Vosíková were not released until 1960. Marta Měšt’anová eventually found employment in the office of a compressor repair company, and a few years before her retirement she switched to the financial administration. Radek Měšt’an, her second husband, originally from Uherský Brod, was sentenced to seven years for espionage in 1949.
