If you see the SS, cross to the other side of the street
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Jana Procházková was born in Rokycany on 1 September 1933 into a working class family. Her grandfather Jan Mráček was as a charcoal burner. Her father Jaroslav was a toolmaker and mother was Františka a housekeeper and then a telephone operator. As a child, the witness saw many developments in wartime Prague. Right after high school, where she involuntarily became part of many communist petitions, Jana Procházková got a job at Czechoslovak Radio. Her first job was technical control of the broadcats of Rudolf Slánský’s trial. She was later promoted to programming headquarters. It was also at the radio that the witness met her husband Jan Procházka who held a senior position in the newsroom and served as the director of the Plzeň station in 1963. The couple were also friends with the writer Ota Pavel and his wife Věra. Although the witness’s husband was a convinced communist, he was banned from working at the radio after the onset of normalisation due to his reformist views and died of leukaemia in 1979. From 1986 on, Jana Procházková regularly took part in anti-regime protests. She was living in Prague in 2025.
