Eva Valentová

* 1947

  • “We used to visit him in Ostrov near Karlovy Vary. There were these long barracks, just like the ones you know from concentration camps. They took us inside the long house. There was a big stove for heat. To this day, I remember the wooden floor coated with tar; such an enduring childhood memory. The building was divided in half lengthwise. Visitors were on the one side, and wardens would bring the prisoners to the other side, and we would talk through a window. Later on, dad told me he had an immensely hard time coping with separation from me; it hurt him almost physically. When they put him in prison, I was six and a half and my brother was only half a year old; dad’s bond with my brother was not that strong yet, but his bond with me was massive. He missed me terribly. During a visit, mum gave me an apple and a pack of cigarettes, hoping that we could hand them over to dad. There was one warden with each prisoner. Dad asked the warden to let me in close to him. There was a side door in the wall. He asked to let me in because he wanted to hug me. It happened, and I put the apple and cigarettes in his pocket. At that point, huge ruckus burst out. Two windows down, there was a Gypsy, and he started yelling: ‘If he can hug his child, I want my children in here too!’ And the Gypsy kids rushed in and wanted to go in. At that point, the wardens stopped it and I had to leave; they didn’t let me or the Gypsy kids in anymore.”

  • “They would come in whenever they pleased, wearing their leather gowns you know. I know my brother was very young; mum was still breastfeeding him. They wouldn’t even let her feed him, so he cried and screamed so bad; he was hungry. When it was getting on their nerves, they let her feed him. They searched the bookshelf. They did it the usual way: they grabbed a book, browsed through it, and threw it on the ground. Book by book, the entire shelf. Then they started rummaging under the bed. I have this lively memory of this. They saw something under the bed, so I had to fetch a broom for them to pull it out. They did, and it was my brother’s dummy. That’s what it was like.”

  • “No one expected it, they released him out of the blue, daddy suddenly came back home and we didn’t prepare anything for him so he got scrambled eggs. Back then he hugged mummy so tight he actually broke two of her ribs. And all he weighted was forty-three kilos.“

  • “It was a long house divided in half, and there were windows in the wall. From a single side they brought the prisoners, amongst which was my daddy too. We were on the other side. The guard was standing behind daddy all the time, so that we could only speak about formal matters. Daddy asked him to hug me and as he was a decent man, he allowed us to hug. I went towards my daddy and mum gave me an apple and cigarettes, and when I hugged him I gave it to him.“

  • Full recordings
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    Dolní Počernice, 28.03.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 01:36:30
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 14.03.2023

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    duration: 01:48:43
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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As a child, I hated communists with all my heart

Eva Valentová in Dírna in South Bohemia in 1963
Eva Valentová in Dírna in South Bohemia in 1963
photo: witness archive

Eva Valentová, née Čermáková, was born into a family of commercial engineer Jiří Čermák on 23 May 1947. He worked at Kooperativa for years, and was dismissed on 25 February 1948, the day of the communist coup, because he allegedly sided with so-called agrarian fascism. Jiří Čermák was arrested in 1953 and sentenced to four years due to his alleged anti-government activity. He eventually served three years in Jáchymov, the majority of of which he spent in the dreaded radioactive uraninite sorting plant. In 1962 Eva Valentová began to attend electrical engineering high school in Prague at Na Příkopě. She successfully graduated in 1966. Due to a poor cadre profile and in order to help out her parents financially she immediately took up a job at the Energy Research Institute. This is where she met her future husband who she married in 1968. The couple had two children. Due to a shortage of residential space, the witness and her children lived in a detached house in Southern Bohemia and only in 1982 the family managed to move in together. Just a year later, the marriage fell apart. Until the Velvet Revolution, Eva Valentová worked at the Research Institute for Material Protection. After 1989 she left the field to teach German and French. She also worked as a tourist guide for Čedok. She retired in 2009. She currently lives in her family house in Southern Bohemia, staying stays with her son in Prague-Dolní Počernice occasionally. She has four granddaughters.