Women's Portraits

Vera Pazderková

An eighty-year old woman, mother of three children, grandmother of four grandchildren and now widow. She loves books and hiking, lives actively, keeps working for her fun and for the fun of her friends of the Club of Czech Hikers.

She was born in Prague and spent her childhood in the middle of a big family with her parents, her grandmother and grandfather, her siblings and her uncle’s family. Her parents were not spoiling her. They were sportsmen; they loved water sports and went in for hiking. They brought her to the Sokol sporting organization in order to make sports her life hobby. She still keeps going in for sports.

War child

I am a war child, she says. I have deep memories of that time. When I was fifteen I experienced one of unforgettable air strikes on Prague at the end of April 1945. When the sirens announced the end of the strike, all children were sent home from school. We lived not far from the Praha-Bubny railway station. My mother welcomed me saying: Hurry up, you will go to the station with me, a train with concentration camp prisoners has arrived there. My mother had prepared peas for lunch that day; she strained the excess water from it, added a bit of grease, took a ladle and we went to the station with the pot. There were coaches full of skinny men in striped rags. My mother scooped up the peas and gave it to their hands and caps held out. I will never forget the poo.

Travels with books

I loved books since my youth and books become a part of my profession and of my personal life. After my secondary school-leaving exam I studied library science at Charles University in Prague and after that I started working as professional librarian in the National Library. “Imprisoned” there in cellar spaces, I soon understood that I could and did not want to live in such way. Did lucky chance help me?

I read in the “Čtenář” (“Reader”) magazine that there was a mobile library standing in a garage of Český Krumlov and that there was nobody to travel with it in the field because the librarian had joined the military service. I decided immediately.

Working as librarian in Český Krumlov

So I left Prague in 1951 to become a librarian in Český Krumlov. I travelled across the Czech frontier areas with the driver of the “Praga” bus adapted to a library; the area was populated with immigrants from Rumania, Hungary and Slovakia. Those people were often illiterate and did not speak any Czech. Their children who went to Czech schools taught them to speak and read in Czech. We succeeded in awakening their interest in books through their children. The remote villages were rather devastated, houses with smashed windows completely abandoned. The passing bus joined the end of the world with the civilized world. There were almost no streets; the country roads were difficultly passable even in good weather. In winter we took a bucket with sand and a shovel along to shovel the snow from the roads. We often repaired the broken bus with our own hands and changed a flat tyre.

Messenger of news       

The bus had a loudspeaker on its roof to announce the arrival of the library. People came to borrow books, they gathered, wanted to talk, to sing songs and to watch films on a bed sheet hanging on the barn door as projecting screen. We brought joy and contentment to them. Long time after I had stopped being a librarian travelling through the frontier areas I met “my” readers from the mobile library in Český Krumlov. They still recognize me and greet me.

Common experiences

We liked books; many of us liked sports as well. We live in movement together with friends till today. We organize trips across the Czech Republic; we hike through the frontier areas of Austria and Germany. We encourage our children to love people, children, nature, hiking and water sports too. We seek and find friends on our way through the life.

Friendship returns me life strength; it fills me with assurance and balance and gives me good mood.

MUDr. Alena Rezková