In June 1979, she was attacked and knocked out by a masked member of State Security
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Zdena Tominová was born on February 7, 1941 in Prague. Her father was a worker and a member of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. After primary and secondary school she studied acting and philosophy. She finished her studies in 1968. She then worked as a freelance interpreter for the Prague Information Service. She married the philosopher Julius Tomin, who organised philosophical seminars at home during the period of normalisation. Officially, he supported his family as a machinist and later as a guard at the Prague Zoo. At the end of May 1978, Zdena Tominová signed the Charter 77 declaration at Ladislav Hejdánek’s office. She lost her job and became a housewife. Apart from signing the Charter, she also worked in VONS (Committee for the Protection of the Unjustly Prosecuted) on organizational work, transcribing and distributing documents, passing on messages and, thanks to her language skills, communicating with foreign countries. From February to the end of 1979 she served as spokesperson for Charter 77 together with Václav Benda and Jiří Dientsbier. After the arrest of Benda and Dientsbier in May, they were replaced by Jiří Hájek and Ladislav Hejdánek. In her role as spokeswoman, Tominová experienced surveillance (sometimes with the “assistance” of ten people and five cars), wiretapping, the constant presence of Public Security officers outside her apartment for several months, as well as interrogations, detentions, and threats. In June 1979, a masked member of State Security attacked her on her return home in the evening, knocked her unconscious and tried to load her into a car. According to State Security plan, she was to be taken to a forest outside Prague and beaten. Tominová was rescued by random pedestrians. State Security then launched a denunciation campaign against the entire family, followed their children, and physically assaulted their eldest son during a summer job. The Tomins became the targets of the “Asanace” operation - the code name for the State Security operation to bully selected dissidents into emigrating abroad. The family eventually left Czechoslovakia in September 1980 and settled in the UK, where a feature film was made about their life story. Zdena Tominová worked as an editor for the BBC’s Czech service until her retirement. She also wrote several film scripts and had two novels published in English. She did not return to Czechoslovakia as a permanent resident after November 1989. She received an award as a participant in the anti-communist resistance. Zdena Tominová died on May 24, 2020 in Prague.
