“My mother advised me to always be honest. And everything I did I did with full commitment,” recalls her daughter Jana Kanska Milada Horakova. He has lived in America for more than half a century, but he regularly returns to the Czech Republic and feels at home here. He reads Czech newspapers daily on the Internet and follows events in the United States with great interest. “Now it seems that people really value democracy,” he says of the current Czech Republic.
Jana Kanska, daughter of Milady Horakova, in Spotlight. | Video: Blahoslav Baťa
“If the last presidential election had turned out differently, maybe democracy would have been in danger,” assesses the current political situation in the Czech Republic, the daughter of lawyer and politician Milada Horakova, who was killed by the communist regime.
According to Jana Kanska, what her mother regrets in today’s world is how people “fight”. “It’s the same in the Czech Republic as it is in the US. The opposition always has to find something in the ruling party to define itself and gain popularity. That’s normal,” he explains.
In the interview, Kanska recalled the time when her family was arrested by the Gestapo and later by the Communists. She also remembers the time when her father and mother were thinking of emigrating.
“They were still thinking about it. But the government members who had already gone abroad at that time were working with Mom to stay as much as possible and inform about how the situation was developing here. She was very responsible and caring. She always kept her promises, she always thought it was right, but suddenly It just fell apart,” Kanska recounts in the interview.
A woman who, after her mother’s murder and her father’s exile, lives under the surveillance and oppression of a totalitarian communist regime, says she has no grudge against the world.
“It bothers me that the whole world is angry,” says Kanska. The fact that some people remember the communist regime with nostalgia is explained by one erasing a lot of unpleasant things from one’s memory. “I always ask everyone about such simple things. The question of whether one has something less now than one had then always leaves everyone uncertain,” he adds.
You can watch the entire interview in the intro video or listen to it on your favorite podcast app.
