I was only allowed to care for my daughter in prison for four months.
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Mojmíra Soldátová, née Smetáková, was born in Brno on 17 June 1924 into a clerical family. The family moved to Hradec Králové where Mojmíra completed secondary school. She worked in a shop during the war and was imprisoned by the Gestapo for a week for her anti-Nazi views. She returned to Brno after the war and completed studies at the faculty of law. She joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1945 out of admiration for the Soviet Union and its war sacrifices. Until graduation in March 1949, she made her living as a language teacher in a hotel school, and she married L. Soldát, an officer of the Czechoslovak Army in March 1949. During ski training, she and her pupils spontaneously formed a debate group and critically discussed the communist regime. On returning from the hills, the students asked her to type anti-communist leaflets. The StB arrested her for this activity further to a denunciation on 20 May 1949. By coincidence, her physician informed her that she was pregnant on the same day. After arrest, M. Soldátová was taken from the school to the StB headquarters in Brno’s Orlí Street, and she was interrogated in Příční Street for several weeks, 10-12 hours a day. The interrogators, however, treated the pregnant Mojmíra well, even allowing her special food her husband sent to the detention cell. Still, due to psychological duress, she bled seriously several times during detention and had to be treated in the prison hospital and then in a civilian hospital. On 17 September 1949, the State Court in Brno sentenced M. Soldátová to six years in prison for collusion against the Republic. She was expelled from the CPC, her husband lost his military job and her brother Milan was expelled from his studies. Being pregnant, she went to prison in Pankrác where there was a special ward for pregnant women. Due to complications in delivery, she eventually gave birth in a civilian hospital. She was only allowed to care for her daughter for four months, after which the child was sent to be brought up by her grandparents. She worked in a laundry in Pankrác and then in Česká Lípa, and she cut beads in Minkovice. She was released on parole on amnesty in 1953. At first she was a housewife, then started teaching in an elementary school in Brno. She retired from this position at the age of eighty. Mojmíra Soldátová was a member of the Confederation of Political Prisoners. She received an award of a participant in the anti-communist resistance.
