I felt like I’d been running away my whole life
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Lubomíra Racková, née Szypitková, was born on 18 May 1938 in the village of Tysmenycja in Poland (today’s western Ukraine) to Anna and Theodor Szypitko. Her mother was Czech, her father Ukrainian. Her parents met in Czechoslovakia, where her father studied law at Charles University during the First Republic. Lubomíra Racková spent the first year of her life in her native village. Then the family fled from the Soviets to the Protectorate. They spent a large part of the World War II in Český Těšín, where the father was totally deployed. In 1944 they returned to Hořelice, their mother’s home village, where they lived through the liberation. Neither of her parents was a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). Lubomíra Racková attended primary school in Rudná, after which she entered an eleven-year secondary school in Prague (specifically the present-day Vančura Grammar School). She graduated from the Faculty of Civil Engineering of the Czech Technical University. During her studies, she married Jindřich Racek, with whom she raised two children - a daughter, Lucie (*1964), and a son, Jindřich (*1966). She spent most of her working career at the State Institute for the Reconstruction of Historic Towns and Buildings. During the normalisation period she met sociologist Jiřina Šiklová, whom she later helped to distribute various printed materials. In the second half of the 1980s she participated in anti-regime demonstrations. After the fall of the regime, she worked as a freelancer. In 2025 she was living in Prague.
