Dagmar Stachová

* 1947

  • “My mother came back one night in 1957. And we didn't have a clue as we were sleeping. In the morning, my grandfather went to the cleaners. They took our house and seized our business, but my grandfather kept working there as an employee and he was the first to get up at four in the morning. He went to open the cleaners and found my mother among the clothes prepared for cleaning. She was hiding in those rags like some kitten. He ran in our bedroom and said: 'Get up! Miládka is here!' So at half past four we rushed out, my grandmother and me, and we saw this bundle that was lying there. As my mother would hide there so she wouldn´t wake us up. She just found herself a place and in the morning, my grandfather found her.”

  • “We were living in a family house in Vítkovice. There was this half where we were living and the other half where my grandmother had her dry cleaning business. My grandmother gave half of the house to my mother. And after my mother was imprisoned, they confiscated all her assets including that part of the house. Yet no one told us. No one found appropriate to tell us about this, so we just went on living there. Years later, some official came, someone like today´s bailiff, and announced that my grandmother was I don´t know how many thousands in debt as she didn´t pay rent. My grandmother said that was impossible as the house belonged to her. “Well it passed on the state long time ago, you have nothing at all.' he said. It was indeed quite a huge debt back then. And after that, I remember my grandmother sending me with this hundred or maybe two hundred crowns she would save to the housing care department to pay the debt. And probably she managed to cover the debt, as after some time they were no longer bothering us. But we never got the house back.”

  • “My grandmother and I, we went to Staré Hamry for a vacation. We were in the dinning hall. Then this car showed up, State Security men in leather jackets jumped out from it and forced us to get on, they didn´t tell us why they were arresting us, where they were taking us or what was going to happen. They just drove us somewhere. Later, I found out that I was in Ostrava city centre, in April the 30th Street. As there was the local State Security headquarters where people were interrogated. They separated us as we got there. My grandmother went one way, I went the other. And they insisted I would tell them what my grandparents were talking about, what they were planning. I didn´t know anything of course, being just a child. As we went to bed early, not like today, when people would stay up late. So I didn´t know if they discussed anything. And if they would talk politics, they surely wouldn´t be doing that in front of me. State Security men didn´t understand that and kept tormenting me, insisting that I have to say what they were talking about. It went for quite a long time and I was really hungry. And this was one of those unforgeable moments, as this State Security man would come with a tray full of open sandwiches that smelled so good. And he kept sticking it under my nose, saying: 'Are you hungry?' And I said that was very hungry. And he said: 'I will let you have some, if you tell me what your grandparents were talking about. He kept tormenting me like this for quite some time. And I just kept crying, insisting that I just didn´t know.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Ostrava, 13.02.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 48:45
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 2

    Ostrava, 13.02.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 47:54
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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After they arrested my mother, I was left alone for several days. I was two years old

Dagmar Stachová in 1966
Dagmar Stachová in 1966
photo: archiv pamětnice

Dagmar Stachová, née Ježková, was born on March 31st 1947 in Nový Hrozenkov in Vsetín Region. After 1949, her parents, Milada and Jaroslav Ježovi, had been supporting Jaromír Vrba, one of the leaders of the anti-Communist resistance group Světlana, as he went into hiding after he was injured in a shootout with Bohumil Hýl, a policeman. After Vrba had been apprehended by the police, Dagmar´s mother Milada had also been arrested in a gamekeeper´s lodge in which the family had been living. They left Dagmar by herself as a two-year-old child. After several days, a family friend found the hungry, crying baby by chance. After that, Jaroslav Jež had been hiding in the mountains for two years. In the end, he was arrested, as was his wife, and they were both sentenced to sixteen years in prison. Dagmar was raised by her grandparents in Ostrava. As a child, she was interrogated by Secret Police men, who wanted to know what her grandparents were talking about at home. There were constant house searches taking place in their household. State Security persecuted her her whole life. After their parents were released from prison, she had never been able to establish a viable relationship with them. The family broke up, as her grandmother was blaming her son-in-law, Jaroslav Jež, whom she saw as the cause of the whole tragedy. However, Dagmar considers her father a hero, being convinced that his involvement in the anti-Communist resistance was the right thing to do. In 1969, she had received a suspended sentence for the distribution of leaflets condemning the Soviet occupation. After the November revolution in 1989, she joined Civic Democratic Party (ODS) and had been involved in local politics. She was expelled from the party as she didn’t embrace its candidate after she learned that he had been a Communist party member.