Dagmar Chlebounová

Dagmar Chlebounová was born February 8th 1932 in Litomyšl. After going through her elementary schooling (including a one year of vocational training), she applied for a Higher School of Social Work in Litomyšl, which she attended for two years. After the closing down of the school, she transferred to a Higher school of Social Work and Nursing in Pardubice, where she finished her third year, the last one before she was arrested. While still in Litomyšl, she was a member of a Girls´ Scouts group, and among her friends there were also students of Litomyšl grammar school. These students formed a group called Hvězda (Star), centered around Miroslav Kohout, and their aim was organizing students in activities against the official Czechoslovak Union of Youth and its commanding tendencies. Dagmar Chlebounová came to several of their meetings and expressed her support for the cause. However, the group did not even launch its activities, and following an unfortunate incident in the school, when two students tore portraits of president Gottwald and general Stalin and flushed them into a toilet, it was disbanded. One of the students who did it, Jan Pech, was Dagmar´s boyfriend. Although she spent the school year 1949-1950 out of Litomyšl, investigation was underway, and soon she became drawn into it as well. After several preliminary interrogations she was arrested on September 16th 1950 and a month later tried in a case against an alleged anti-state group centered around the person of F.A. Stříteský, head of the piarist dormitory in Litomyšl. As a minor, she was sentenced to two years of imprisonment for high treason. She spent 13 months in prisons in Chrudim, Hradec Králové and in Institute for young female delinquents in Lnáře.

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