"After the first run, when the children did their admissions interviews - and we had the best results among the schools here in Semily. They did some tests, what are the tests, and we had the best results, so the attitude that the Waldorf school is a school where children just play or that children with disabilities go there, that's what was said here in Semily. Then, when they saw that the children did well in the entrance exams and that they did well in two colleges, the awareness of the Waldorf school improved."
"When we arrived at the high school, I was in about my second year, and suddenly the principal came in and said that Pospíšilová and about four other students would go with him to the principal's office. Well, we went and they told us that we were like excellent students and that as a reward we had been chosen to become members of the Communist Party. We looked at it like fools because we didn't care about politics at all and we didn't even want to join the Communist Party. Suddenly everybody started whispering and saying: 'Pospíšilová, what's your name?' 'Alena.' 'Oh, so it's a mistake.' I had another Pospíšilová in my class, she was Anežka, so they got it wrong, so they told me: 'So you can go to class and call Anežka for me.' And I was saved, because if I had come home and said that I had joined the Communist Party, my dad would go crazy."
Alena Zdražilová, née Pospíšilová, was born on September 25, 1948 in Mladá Boleslav. Both her parents were persecuted by the communist regime. My mother‘s parents had their shop taken away and my father lost his job as a factory assistant - he had to commute far away for work and was not with his family very much. The witness wanted to study Russian, and when the invasion came in August 1968, she went to the Soviet soldiers and argued with them in Russian. After the invasion she decided not to study Russian. She graduated from the Faculty of Education and went to the school in Libštát and later with her husband to Semily. There they fought hard with the communist headmistress, who tried to get them out of the school in various ways. Her husband eventually left. After 1989, the witness worked to get the communist headmistress out of the school. Even before the revolution, she learned about Waldorf education and in the 1990s she was at the birth of the Waldorf school in Semily, where she is still working today (2024).
