The lovers kissed in a uranium mine

Milena Hypšová worked as a civilian employee in the uranium labour camp, checking gangue for radioactivity. She met her life-long love among the political prisoners. At first she thought he was from State Security – he had an electric mine lamp like they did – and she behaved to him accordingly, with aloofness and disdain: “And the way it was, he thought some not very nice things of me. But then he heard about me from various people – and he was surprised. One time he came along with his friend Vašek, also a political (prisoner), and that’s how we started talking. Every now and then he’d come, every now and then Vašek would, who carried our messages – it was more of a pen friendship,” Milena Blatná (née Hypšová) recounts. She was transferred to a different place soon after. She thought she would never see her dearest again. “It happened on the First of May. I was leaving from night shift and they came in the morning. I was carrying something to the workshop, and that’s where we met. I got my first kiss from him. And after that it was where and when possible.” Jiří Blatný, a student whose cooperation with a resistance group caused him to end up with 13 years in prison for high treason, wrote a reel note to his parents. He begged them to stay in touch with Milena, in case she was transferred to a different place again. That happened in February 1954. Milena was discharged, probably because of some informant. She began studies at the University of Economics, and waited for her dear one almost five years. They married in 1958, immediately after his release. They lived together 45 years and brought up two children.