The last outburst before the Normalisation
Věra Roubalová, a student at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague, met the student activists organized by Jiří Müller during her university studies at the end of the 1960s. Roubalová and her classmates published a student magazine called “Buchar” and were actively engaged in the protests against the invasion of the Warsaw-Pact forces into Czechoslovakia in August 1968. They were involved in actions, for example, that were aimed at making it harder for the invading troops to orient themselves in Czechoslovakia. Věra Roubalová remembers very well the funeral of Jan Palach in January 1969. She was among the student organizers of the funeral march through Prague that took place on January 25, 1969. Palach’s funeral is considered to be one of the last manifestations of the people before the onset of the Normalization in the 1970s: “His death was shocking. After he had burned himself, charismatic leaders of the nation spoke out publicly and appealed to the people to not repeat what he had done. What was amazing was the fact that these large crowds of people and students marching through Prague during the funeral were actually not suppressed at a time when the oppressions and reprisals were already commonplace. It was a great manifestation of the power of the people and I think that because of Palach, this was one of the last outbursts before the Normalization, which unfortunately followed suit very quickly.”
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Věra Roubalová-Kostlánová
Věra Roubalová-Kostlánová, née Lomská, was born in 1947 in Prague. Her father and mother both had Jewish roots, (her father originated in a famous Jewish family from Prague, the Liebens), they survived the war together in England and both were convinced Communists. Her father worked as a regional secretary of the Communist Party in the city of Plzeň. In the period of 1950-1956, he was imprisoned and tried in a trumped-up judicial process with Marie Švermova and the regional secretaries. Věra spent a part of her childhood with her younger brother in an orphanage. In the 1960s, while studying at college, she began to associate herself with student activists, in particular with Jiří Müller. This was also where she met her first husband Pavel Roubal. They strongly opposed the Soviet invasion in 1968 and helped to prepare the student strike of the fall of 1968. They also helped in organizing the funeral of Jan Palach. In spite of having three sons, the Roubalovi spouses were among the first signatories of the Charter 77. In the summer of 1978, Pavel Roubal was sentenced to two months in prison for producing and publishing samizdat books. Later, he became a member of the Committee for the Protection of the Unjustly Persecuted (VONS). At some point, Věra and Pavel moved from Prague to Častrov in the Pelhřimov region. However, they continued to maintain contacts with the other dissidents and they were constantly being spied on and interrogated by the police. In October 1990, suffering from a mental illness, Pavel Roubal committed suicide. In January 1992, Věra Roubalová became the last of three spokespeople of the Charter 77. Since the 1990s, Věra Roubalová, later Kostlánová, has devoted herself to psychotherapy and to working with migrants. She has worked for 15 years as an advisor in a refugee shelter. She received the Memory of Nations award for 2010.
