“In February 1977 Olga Vojáčková signed the Charter petition. And she told me: 'I signed this for my whole family. As your mother can't sign it, nor your father or you. Nothing will happen to you, so I just signed it.' I said: 'Aunt, you are being so brave. I am so glad you did it.' I also got to know part of the Charter petition, but I didn't have the complete text. Neither did my aunt. But State Security men started harassing my aunt, they wanted to know who brought her the Charter so she could sign it. And my aunt, being a lady, invited them in and made them some coffee. And she told them: 'Gentlemen, could you explain to me, how such young and intelligent men like you could do work like this, to go around harassing people? Get out!' She would throw them out. But I didn't see it, she just told me about it.”
“I also remember that my father, Fedor Soldan, wanted to do an exhibition of paintings by František Vojáček, he had been selecting paintings and he took me with him, we did everything together. And he selected pictures to be framed. And there was also this nude that had been slit by a razor from top to bottom. I said: 'Dad, what does it mean?' And my father would tell me, a five-year old child, that Germans did it, when they were arresting František and Olga Vojáček. And I wondered a lot, being a five-years old, how could anyone destroy a painting like this. I thought that the Nazis were some horrible monsters after all, that they were thinking outside the normal world of culture.”
"In Spring of 1945, they gathered most of the female inmates and forced them to participate in this death march, as they wanted to evacuate them from the camp. And my aunt managed to escape, with few other Czech prisoners. They march across the country, inhospitable and unwelcoming in the spring, but they manage to hide in a barn, where sun-rays would wake them up, so they would watch the scenery, and my aunt told me this was the most beautiful sunrise she ever saw. As they were free, or to some extent at least. Then they went back to the barn and suddenly they heard people talking Russian in front of the barn, so they would run out and they would welcome the Red Army men and they would give them better clothes. And my aunt and a few other women would repair uniforms for the Red Army, and that was the reason she came to Prague so late. And all the people who were registered were coming back already. And my father tried to find her at the Red Cross, but they just didn't know, but in the end, my aunt would come back.”
Olga Soldanová was born on 23 August 1942 in Prague. Her aunt, Olga Vojáčková, née Jančová, a resistance fighter, painter, journalist and later also a Charter 77 petitioner, had a profound impact on her life. As during the Second World War, she had been arrested by the Gestapo and spent four years in Ravensbrück concentration camp. Inspired by her aunt, Olga Soldanová studied art, Czech and history at a college of education and Czech at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University. For a while she taught at a secondary technical school of graphics, later she was employed at an institute of history. Soon, she left abroad with her American husband, Josef Las, spending most of her life in Germany, England, Holland and the United States. She would visit her family in Czechoslovakia, during the ‘normalization’ period she would bring Karel Kryl’s recordings to the country. After retiring, she returned to Czech Republic with her husband. In 2021, she had been living in Levín, North Bohemia.
