“Several times the preparations were held during Christmas time in our house. It was simply a gathering of many people who were involved in the ministry, young people, priests and teachers. There were various lectures on how to lead the youth, they also learnt various games, and the preparatory sessions for the summer ‘chaloupky’ camps were organized like this: we cleared away things from the rooms, people sat wherever they could, there were let’s say twenty-five people in one room, and the lectures were held there… I remember that I was cooking buckets full of goulash in order to feed the great number of young people, and these were nice experiences, although sometimes it was very demanding…”
“When sirens sounded the warning alarm, it was an interrupted tone and we would run home, and if it was an air raid alarm, we would stay in the school basement. I remember that we always feared that we would not make it home in time. At that time we wore a kind of sandals with a sole made of wood. As we ran down the stairs at school one day, I tumbled down the stairs and afterwards I looked as if I had been through a battle.”
“Everybody was gone and I didn’t have any food at home at that moment; it was while we lived in Vinohrady and there was a shop close to Olšany. I thus ran there to buy at least some bread, because there was nothing! An enormous queue formed there, and the birth of my baby was due, and I thought: I don’t know what’s going to happen. Well, eventually I reached the end of the line, and when I asked for a larger piece of bread and butter, they only gave me a half, and she could not give me a bigger piece in order to have enough for everybody.”
Mariana Muchová, née Jíšová, was born on September 6, 1934 in Prague-Vinohrady in a lawyer’s family. She experienced the end of the war in this neighbourhood. After the end of the war she joined the Scout movement. Since she was not allowed to study in Prague due to her origin, she moved to her aunt’s in Humpolec where she studied a secondary nursing school. After her return to Prague she worked as a laboratory technician and she undertook a distance-study at the Pedagogical Faculty of Charles University in Prague. She subsequently worked as a teacher. Catholics were not allowed to be organized in any groups apart from the local church during that time, and Mariana therefore started a choir which was associated with their parish. In 1950 she married RNDr. Václav Mucha and she began supporting him in his covert activities. Apart from raising their five children she spent her time working with the Catholic youth. In the 1970s their house in Klamovka in Prague became an illegal cultural centre for the Catholics and it was receiving support from abroad. From the late 1970s Mariana was helping to organize Salesian reunions, such as summer camps for children, so-called ‘chaloupky,’ (literally ‘summer-houses’ - transl.’s note) or Christmas meetings. Under the auspices of the ČSTV Czechoslovak Sports Organization she and her husband established a hiking club which they led in accordance with the principles of Scouting. Her husband became ordained a deacon. He died in 1995. Mariana Muchová still enjoys meeting her friends and she considers this mutual support to be very important.
