Lenka Šepsová

* 1955

  • "In the year eighty-seven or six, we met here in Nový Bor, we already lived here on the Rumbur heroes, and a gentleman named Miloslav Vašina lived below us. He was a pastor of the Czechoslovak Evangelical Church, but he was not allowed to pastor because he signed Charter 77. He could, they swept with him in various ways, he even worked in the quarry in Polevsko and everything possible. And then he worked in the hospital, the so-called butler, that is, the man who, for example, transports people to operating rooms, operating rooms, examinations and the like. And at least he could pass on some of his thoughts there. What was beautifully human in him, at least he passed it on there. His wife Kateřina was a teacher and she was also not allowed to teach because she did not sign that she would teach children in the spirit of simply Marxism-Leninism and the like. And he once came to ask us if there would be a place for Kateřina in the Research Institute of Utility Glass, where there was a place in the library. My husband promised to ask, so we met. I remember he came and he had books under his arm like that and I was watching what it was. It was the banned Russian writer Solzhenitsyn who wrote the Gulag Archipelago."

  • "I am here with Mila Vašina and I founded the Civic Forum with others and we were in the square every day. I remember that they then built a flatbed there for us so that we would be like upstairs. Then, over time, it probably had an extra sound; at the beginning it was of course without any sound. I remember the cops standing by the church that first or second day. I always told the man that there were dogs, he said he didn't remember. There were policemen in uniform, and of course there was a secret one among them, who were only in normal civilian clothes, but they listened to what people were saying. So we basically started a Civic Forum here with the others, and we were very active."

  • "I remember waking up on August 21st and my dad was sitting in the kitchen smoking his favorite cigarettes - I don't know if it was the brand Astra or something else, having tears in his eyes. We had the radio on, it was also called a wire radio at the time, it was such a box and it was distributed around every house by wire. It was possible to tune in only one station, there was no other. So he listened and there was a voice saying we were occupied by the Russians. I may have seen the first time my dad had tears in his eyes and cried. We went out right away, there were no phones, my mother and I went out to the supermarket and there were a lot of people there and they said what was going on, that they were being shot and that there would be no food and the like. No one in the Communist Party was with us, we perceived it terribly, especially my father, my parents and my relatives. I would not imagine that something like this could ever happen."

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    Nový Bor, 21.11.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:50:56
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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There is something to look forward to every day

Lenka Šepsová as a students of medicine
Lenka Šepsová as a students of medicine
photo: archiv pamětníka

Lenka Šepsová was born on September 20, 1955 in Hlinsko in the Vysočina region, she grew up in the nearby village of Srní. After a happy childhood, she experienced the occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops. Prior to applying to the medical school, she was threatened with a worsening of her behavior for an allegedly religious drawing. After graduating from medicine, she went to Nový Bor, where she started a family and worked as a pediatrician. She befriended Miloslav Vašina, who was a signatory to Charter 77, and in the summer of 1989 signed the Several Sentences manifesto. During the Velvet Revolution, she co-founded the Civic Forum in Nový Bor and organized demonstrations there. In the first free elections in 1990, she was elected a member of the Czech National Council.