Pardubice, East Bohemia/Prague, Jan 20 (CTK) – Nadezda Kavalirova, the long-standing chairwoman of the Czech Confederation of Political Prisoners, suddenly died in a Pardubice hospital aged 93 Friday, her daughter has told CTK.
Kavalirova spent several years in prison during the communist rule.
After the regime’s fall in late 1989, she helped deal with compensation to be paid to former political prisoners and draft the respective new legislation.
Kavalirova’s funeral will take place in the Church of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary in Prague-Strahov at 13:00 on Friday, January 27.
Kavalirova headed the Confederation of Political Prisoners from 2003. Before, she was its deputy chairwoman from 1990.
From December 2007 to January 2013, she also headed the Council of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes (USTR).
“I do not mind old communists now. I mind young people still joining their [Communist] ranks. They are unaware of that this -ism was criminal and condemnable. All totalitarian ideologies are perverse, and the communist one was especially perverse. However, it continues winning over young people in our country, because we did not punish the evil,” Kavalirova told CTK last year.
Nadezda Kavalirova was born on November 13, 1923. After the communist coup in 1948, she was forced to quit the medicine studies because she was a member of the bodies of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party. She took part in a student march to Prague Castle, the presidential seat, in protest against the Communist coup on February 25, 1948.
Kavalirova was sentenced to five years in prison for treason in a show trial in 1956. Three years later, she was released from jail on probation.
rtj/dr/ms
