Honorary citizenship of Prague is far from being the first prestigious award for your work and your life. You already have a state award in the “collection”. Do you accept these symbolic events more with foresight or do you evoke feelings of emotion, etc.?

Rather, there is a feeling that there are many other people who deserve an award. I take it very seriously and with the fact that I will share each award based on what I have done. I was always part of a larger group in which we worked together, tried something, we wanted something together. That’s why I try not to take it personally and remember all the people who have what happened. Co-responsibility is more powerful than when someone wants to enforce something on their own. I consider this essential.

Recently, Prague has hosted major events in support of exile opposition from non-free countries. For example, delegates from the World Uyghur Congress met here in early November. Do you consider the important role of the capital in the field of rights, which is your lifelong theme?

I am very glad that Prague has taken the initiative in this direction, that it participates in these events. I would reiterate here that we need to do things together. To stand together for people who, for example, suffer from similar ideas, which we managed to assert at some point that they have taken root here. There is a need for every decent person to know that he or she is not alone in the world and that it is very important that others hold out who are not so lucky to be able to live as they want and say what I think. Of course, there is more responsibility for what he says.

In the 1990s, you founded the Counseling Center for Refugees. What is your relationship to the specific people you helped then?

I like refugees. Especially ours, which I know personally and have been in contact with them to this day. They have integrated fantastically in our country. I am talking about the first major wave of migration from the former Yugoslavia. Today, these are adults who grew up here, graduated from college. Some represent the Czech Republic in sports and so on. It’s a very nice bunch.

Migration and aid to refugees has been a “hot topic” in the Czech Republic for many years. At the governmental level, a more supportive attitude towards asylum seekers is likely to continue to be difficult to enforce. Shouldn’t Prague take the initiative in this area as well? For example, to offer asylum seekers a part of city flats?

It’s not that simple. The fact is that there are agreements guaranteeing asylum to people for some reasons, such as persecution and so on. When people go for the better, then they should be given the opportunity to show what they can do. And if they are needed here, there should be a legal solution to their stay. But I’m afraid that’s happening today, those huge waves of migration are basically a dark matter. Because there is a lot of money from the people who get involved. And lately, those who would like to go for a better tomorrow are fooled by political demagoguery. They are abused. Today, Belarus is taking care of the European Union with a “gift” that cannot be managed with a simple gesture. Of course, it is necessary to help each other, but this goes beyond a reasonable path that would be proportionate to the real needs of those people as well as those of the recipients. This is a very complex dilemma precisely because of the involvement of greedy political and economic interests. It’s all about people, and that’s terrible.

32 years have passed since the Velvet Revolution. Do you think her legacy is still alive among young people? On the one hand, there is talk of how poor schoolchildren are about the latest history. On the other hand, the main organizers of the anniversary celebrations on Národní třída have been very young people for several years now…

You can’t throw it all in one bag. Some will find out and some will not. Some are interested, some are not. For school children who are not interested in it today, curiosity may awaken later. The point is not to forget those values. Why it all happened. It will appeal to young people of all ages and situations. I hope that no one will be as bad as the decades I have been. For only two years since the end of the war, we thought we would breathe. It has to stay in the people in some way. Where should the next generations learn about the fundamental values ​​when their parents no longer knew. It is very complicated.

Do you share the feeling that the current debate over vaccination is significantly dividing society?

It annoys people unnecessarily. It is true. I tend to observe the tendency to “etch” more and more in different places. At first it looks like small cracks, later the company is “fragmented”. And such, of course, better controlled. Here again, I must say that the interests of bringing a rift between people are not fair. I just want people to use their brains. In order to consult with someone, they agreed, verified information from both sides. And then they made a responsible decision. I was vaccinated because I didn’t want to take responsibility for taking the place of who knows how long in a ward where younger people can recover in the meantime. Besides, I wouldn’t want to pass it on to three generations of my own family like anyone else. But let everyone change their minds. Freedom is also challenging, because it is associated with the very responsibility as the fact that one must not think only of oneself. My freedom ends where the freedom of the other begins. So I have to think of the others too.

At the ceremony of honorary citizenship, it was said that the word bravery expresses you. When you look back on your very varied life, do you see a unifying line in it? Whether bravery or an interest in human rights, freedom?

I think these are all beautiful things worth living for. They have value for me. Even what is valuable sometimes wants a sacrifice. And it’s completely normal. It’s not a big heroism.

Dana Němcová was born in 1934 in Most. She spent her childhood in Chomutov, in 1953 she went to Prague and studied psychology at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University, where she got along with Jiří Němec, a later clinical psychologist and philosopher. In 1955, they married and had seven children together. At the turn of the 1960s and 1970s, Dana Němcová worked as a lecturer at the medical publishing house Avicenum. Significant is the publication of the Young Woman’s Encyclopedia, which was published in 1972. In later editions, however, her name was omitted. In the 1975/76 school year, she worked as a psychologist at a nine-year primary boarding school for children with hearing impairments. However, her employment contract was not extended due to the StB, as at that time there was a lawsuit against The Plastic People of the Universe, which the couple provided to the Germans. In January 1977, they were also among the first to sign Charter 77. A year later, a former Charter spokesman stood for the establishment of the Committee for the Defense of the Unjustly Prosecuted, for which he spent half a year in a detention cell. After the Velvet Revolution, she was a member of the Federal Assembly. However, she left high politics and chaired the board of directors of Olga Havel’s Committee of Good Will. She also founded the Counseling Center for Refugees, where she worked for many years.