“Dagmar Šimková Prožila Čtrnáct Let V Žaláři.” Písecký deník, March 7, 2017. https://pisecky.denik.cz/zpravy_region/dagmar-simkova-prozila-ctrnact-let-v-zalari-20170307.html.
Dagmar Šimková was a political prisoner during the communist repression. She suffered a long prison sentence and was able to pursue her education and help others in the prison system later in life.
Her father’s career as a banker led to her family being targeted. The national administrator had strangers move into her family’s villa, and her sister was unable to attend university on behalf of their bourgeois origins. In response, Šimková involved herself with handing out anti-communist leaflets. She even painted posters ridiculing Klement Gottwald and Antonín Zápotocký, two presidents of Czechoslovakia.
In 1952, she was arrested for harboring two military deserters and sentenced to 15 years for "anti-state activities". She responded she was sorry she could not do more against the regime. A short escape from the Želiezovce labor camp added three years to her sentence.
Šimková, Dagmar. Byly Jsme Tam Taky. Toronto: 68-Publ., 1980.
In her autobiography, Byly jsme tam taky, Šimková sheds light on the struggles and humiliation of women in communist-era prisons and labor camps. ‘According to them [the prison authorities], we are swine, bitches, smelly discharge, whores, and beasts … A woman had to be shamed for her femininity, she had to be deprived of her gender’.
Yet, prisoners also developed bonds and friendships that cultivated strength and helped them cope with their situation. ‘Most of us survived with a healthy mind, and it was determined by the fact that we are women. Not that women had easy conditions in prison, there was no difference in the level of cruelty, but women developed different survival instincts compared to men’.
During her incarceration, Šimková participated in hunger strikes to protest the ill-treatment of prisoners. Her protests even included “mutual tenderness, kindness, attention, and courtesy.” She refused to work on Sundays because of her Catholic faith, leading to her having to pay the state for the time she did not work.
After being freed, Šimková helped found K-231, an organization associating political prisoners of the communist regime during the liberalization of the Prague Spring in 1968. This club was deemed a center of counter-revolution and dissolved after the August invasion, which halted the Czechoslovak reforms. This led to her emigration to Australia in 1968, where she graduated from two universities in art history and social work, became an artist, stuntwoman, and prison therapist, and joined Amnesty International.
Written by: Jaime Johnston
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