"One day I managed to call a company-wide meeting to set up a Citizens' Forum. All 354 people gathered. But the leadership of the Communist Party invited some officials from Brno, they sat down at the chairman's table, gave us one hour for the meeting - no more - and now they started telling us some horrors about what was happening in Poland, and I don't know what all. So I got out and I said: 'So we are here to learn about the conditions for joining the Civic Forum and to find out what it is. We don't want to listen to some difficulties of Poland - they will sort it out themselves.´ My colleague, Ing. Krečenko, took the floor and said that Mrs Blanková was right here and that we would vote, no questions asked. Anyone who wants to sign up should raise their hand. And everybody raised their hands. The only one who did not sign up was our employee, and that was an honest (communist) from Ostrava, Ing. Lanča, who refused to join. But even the officials all applied to join the Civic Forum too. So I was horrified, I said: 'Well, now the communists are going to go there!´ So a colleague took me to Mánes, Martin Palouš was there as an advisor. So I went up to him and said, 'Please, what should we do? And he said, 'We'll take them all, it doesn't matter!' And so I called the Faculty of Science, where the Civic Forum centre was, to this Pánek, and reported: '354 people here have joined the Civic Forum, only one, Lanča, hasn't'.Well, my daughter heard that and said: 'Well, that's my mother - that's my mother from the Research Institute of Agricultural Machinery'. That´s how it looked like there.
"(Mom) was very popular in that area. And it wasn't far from where we lived. Then what happened was that they started to summon her to State Security, to the Interior Ministry, and they wanted her to cooperate with them. Basically to inform on people talking there. So she was there about three times, and then my father decided to put a stop to it in such a rude way. He went there with her, managed to get in, and made a huge scene — saying he didn’t want them summoning her, calling her in, that he didn’t know what they were doing to her there. Basically, he caused a kind of jealous outburst or something like that. He even threatened to smash everything up. He really played the role of that kind of guy… And thanks to that, she got out of it fairly well."
"Now, when there were the air raids, the constant bombing - there was just this front going back and forth. Whether at the beginning of the war, at the end of the war, just all the time. And even after the front line moved away, a Ukrainian nationalist group called the Banderites started operating in the area again. They attacked people of all nationalities — they wanted to cleanse the territory, which had been taken over by the Soviet government, and make it Ukrainian-only. So the conditions there were terrible. I remember we spent a long time in the city shelter. But the conditions there were unimaginable — poor hygiene, diseases, everything you can think of. So some of the older men who had stayed behind dug a tunnel near the house where my mother and I had moved. There was a sandstone slope behind the house, and they dug a tunnel into it where we would hide during air raids. But to be able to get there in time, especially in the summer, we would sleep outside near the tunnel entrance in the garden, with blankets covered in dark cloths. My mother would hold my baby sister in her arms, I would grab onto her skirt, and we’d run for the tunnel. Bombs would start falling out of nowhere. There was an old spring sofa out in the yard, and a bomb landed directly into it — but luckily, it didn’t explode. The springs and the cushioning softened the impact. It just stayed there, stuck. During one air raid — my mother was there too — we didn’t have time to run. My little sister was sleeping in her crib, which was by the window. Suddenly, the bombing started. Every single window in the house shattered — except that one. My mother managed to grab me and stood in the doorway to shield me. That was a miracle. You really can’t describe the horrors of war. That’s why I have such deep sympathy for Ukrainians today."
Světla Svítková, later married to Blanková, was born in 1939 in the town of Luck, the centre of western, i.e. Polish, Volhynia. She came from a wealthy and well-to-do family that played an active role in the local Czech community. Her grandfather, Václav Bečka, co-founded the local Czech cultural association (matice česká) and supported local cultural life. Her father, Josef Svítek, owned a transport company, while her mother, Evženie, took care of the family. An idyllic childhood was interrupted by World War II. During the Nazi occupation, the family hid a Jewish girl in their attic. During air raids, they repeatedly took shelter in the city bunker — sometimes for as long as three weeks at a time. Ukrainian ultranationalists, the Banderites, were active in the region and massacred Polish families during the so-called Volhynian Massacre. After the arrival of the Red Army, the NKVD terrorized the area — deporting entire families to Siberia. Světla’s father, Josef, along with his five brothers, joined the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, known as Svoboda’s Army. Because of this, her mother Evženie was repeatedly interrogated by the NKVD. Světla’s youngest aunt, also named Evženie, who was just seventeen at the time, joined the army as well, as did her cousin, also seventeen. When the war ended and the Soviets gained control over western (Polish) Volhynia, most of the Czech population left and returned to Czechoslovakia — all wishing to get as far away from Soviet rule as possible. Světla’s extended family also returned and settled in Mariánské Lázně. Her parents took out a loan and ran a small hotel until her father Josef was arrested and sentenced to sixteen months of forced labor in the uranium mines of Jáchymov. He was released thanks to the intervention of Ludvík Svoboda, whom he had served as a driver during the Battle of the Dukla Pass. However, the family lost the hotel, and Světla was marked by a poor political background report (kádrový posudek), which prevented her from pursuing higher education. The State Security (StB) tried to recruit both her mother Evženie and Světla, promising her the chance to study. Both women resisted the pressure. Because she spoke several languages, Světla worked at the reception desks of hotels in Mariánské Lázně and Karlovy Vary, later in a bank, and in 1962 she married nuclear physicist Jiří Blank and moved to Prague. He was offered a position at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, near Moscow, where the family spent four years. They returned to Prague in 1967 and shared the excitement of the Prague Spring, welcomed the relaxation of censorship and freedom of speech, and supported Dubček’s reforms. They considered the invasion by Warsaw Pact troops a tragedy. After returning to Prague, Světla completed a three-year bachelor’s program in industrial law and worked as a patent researcher. During the political screenings of the early 1970s, Jiří Blank declared his disagreement with the occupation, which resulted in the entire family — now with two daughters — receiving another negative political evaluation. The fall of the communist regime was welcomed by the whole family — they attended demonstrations in Wenceslas Square and listened to Václav Havel’s speeches. At work, Světla led the strike committee and encouraged people to join the Civic Forum. After her husband died of cancer in February 1990, she immersed herself in work. As of 2025, she lived in Prague and devoted her time to her daughters, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
