For nine years, we hid the priest Josef Kacálek in the attic
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Drahomíra Vitvarová was born on 14 July 1931 in the village of Poniklá in the foothills of the Giant Mountains. Her father was a railway worker, and her strongly religious mother took care of the household. They had no other children. The village of Poniklá, situated in the Sudetenland, fell to Germany after the Munich Agreement of 1938, but her parents opted for Czech nationality. Drahomíra therefore continued to attend a Czech school and was additionally given compulsory and intensive German lessons. From 1943, her father was deployed to work in Germany, but returned home in good health at the end of the war. After primary school, Drahomíra Vitvarová studied at the grammar school in Jilemnice, where she graduated in 1950. At this time, she attended illegal religious education circles, which were founded in the foothills of the Giant Mountains by the Slovak priest Silvester Krčméry under the influence of the French Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne (JOC) movement. One of the priests who worked in the region and knew Drahomíra Vitvarová from the JOC was Father Josef Kacálek. After 1948, he came into conflict with the communist authorities and was threatened with arrest for distributing the circulars and pastoral letters of Cardinal Josef Beran. When Vitvarová discovered that he was on the run from State Security, she helped hide him. Josef Kacálek secretly lived with her parents between 1950 and 1959. He occupied an attic room and never left the house. In illegal conditions, he nevertheless celebrated mass at home and received visits from the clergy. On 29 April 1959, Kacálek was arrested, and on the same day, State Security arrested Drahomíra’s father and her future husband, who also helped in hiding the priest. This happened one day before their wedding. Drahomíra was arrested on 21 May 1959 in the hospital in Nová Paka, where she worked as a nurse. She underwent pre-trial detention and was marked by psychological pressure and blackmail, in Hradec Králové, where the trial took place on 12 and 13 August 1959. The priest Kacálek was given five years for evading justice, Drahomíra Vitvarová 16 months for aiding and abetting, and her future husband, Václav Vitvar, 18 months. She served her sentence in Trnovice nad Váhom in an agricultural labour camp, from where she was released on 3 May 1960 with a five-year suspended sentence. Her fiancé, Václav Vitvar, was also released from prison on a presidential amnesty in May, and their wedding took place soon after. Drahomíra Vitvarová worked as a nurse until her retirement. Both spouses received awards as participants in the anti-communist resistance.
