In the series, saleswoman Eva lamented several times how difficult it is to make it in the film industry and the occupation did not make it easy for her. She might be able to sacrifice honor and morality for a role in the film. Viewers often attribute her character to Lída Baarová as an inspiration, but she was not the only one who was subjected to the People’s Court after the war.
Due to her relationship with Wilhelm Gruber, Eva’s character reminds one of the most discussed stars of the First Republic, Lída Baarová, who was Goebbels’s (reich minister of propaganda) lover. Baarová sensed the danger that threatened her even before her liberation, but in the end she did not succeed completely in disappearing from the republic. After her release, she spent over a year in prison before the court recognized that she was in contact with Goebbels and Hitler at a time when Czechoslovakia was not yet under increased threat. She was not proven to be a whistleblower and support the Nazi regime. Baarová nevertheless decided to emigrate to Austria in an uncertain time.
Eva’s fate is similar to hers in that Eva is driven by love, which she knows is dangerous and bad, but is stronger than reason.
Although Eva is unhappy that she still has to earn a living as a saleswoman, if she had any idea what the actresses from the occupation period had to go through after the war, she probably wouldn’t have rushed in front of the camera.
Cinemas during the occupation
Many films were made during the occupation and cinemas were full. The reason was simple. People’s lives were hard and sad at that time. Every day they faced adversity and no one could be sure if tomorrow he would be free, have a job and enough food to feed himself and his family.
Cinemas that showed mostly harmless romantic comedies were one of the few ways to immerse yourself, at least for a moment, in another world where humor and love reigned supreme. Everyone loved their movie stars.
Terror after liberation
However, that ended after the war and hell often broke out for the most popular actors and actresses. For some of them, the life and career was not destroyed by the war, but by the period of freedom and social changes that occurred after liberation.
The acting stars were insulted, beaten. At best, they faced a fine and career termination, at worst, contempt for people and prison.
Mandlová also had her time in prison
Baar wasn’t the only one to catch it. Adina Mandlová in her book Today I don’t laugh about it anymore she stated that she was imprisoned as a warning to the entire art world.
The era of people’s courts came, and instead of laws, envy came to the fore. Disciplinary commissions were established to examine hundreds of artists who “were visible during the occupation”. It was enough to act in a German film or to be seen in the company of representatives of the occupying power.
Although Mandlová only acted in one German film, she did not bow down to anyone and rather made fun of the Germans, but the Revolutionary Guards arrested her for an alleged affair with KH Frank. Although he claimed publicly about her that she sleeps with every gypsy, the people knew their stuff. At a time when ordinary people were in need, Mandlová only blossomed on the cinema screen. That was enough.
She ended up in an overcrowded police cell, where four women died within a week. The cell was so full that no one could even sit down and the children were screaming with hunger. Even in Pankrác, things were not better after that, beatings and hunger were the order of the day. The work methods of the guards were not so different from those practiced by the Germans, the actress stated in her book.
Fortunately, the people’s court could not keep a prisoner without proven guilt behind bars forever, so she too was eventually released. No collaboration has been proven. I guess no one was surprised that after such an experience she preferred to go to England. She returned to her native country only shortly before her death.
There were many more similar fates. For example, Vlasta Burian or Nataša Gollová also went through hell, for whom the people had no sympathy, even though she volunteered to work in Terezín in 1945, where she contracted typhus and fought for her life for half a year.
