{"id":8896,"date":"2024-06-19T16:31:37","date_gmt":"2024-06-19T16:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/?p=8896"},"modified":"2026-03-08T10:09:34","modified_gmt":"2026-03-08T10:09:34","slug":"vesela-marie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/vesela-marie\/","title":{"rendered":"VESEL\u00c1 MARIE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Address: MIL\u00cd\u010cOVA 425\/4, PRAGUE 3\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

NAR. 1901
\nARESTED 20. 11. 1943
\nIMPRISONED IN RAVENSBR\u00dcCK
\nMURDERED 14 .2. 1945<\/p>\n

Marie Vesel\u00e1, n\u00e9e Scherberov\u00e1, was born on February 25, 1901, in Prague. As an adult, she worked as a senior clerk at the then well-known company Janka a spol. in Radot\u00edn, and later at the post office. According to eyewitnesses, she stood out for her diligence and honesty.
\nWhen she decided to supplement her modest household income with a small business after the birth of her daughter in the mid-1930s, she obtained the necessary official approval thanks to her excellent references. She chose a trade that was quite unusual even at that time: running a private “lost and found” office. With such a sensitive request, the authorities carefully examined whether the applicant was a morally and civically reliable person. As the investigation revealed, Marie Vesel\u00e1’s conscientiousness at Janka a spol. had prevented the embezzlement of 5,000 crowns, which at the time would have represented a year’s income for many people. The relevant authority therefore had no objections to issuing the necessary license to Marie Vesel\u00e1.
\nAt that time, Marie Vesel\u00e1 had already professed her faith as a Jehovah’s Witness, who were well known during the First Republic for distributing religious literature and promoting the Bible. In 1933, she even became one of the four statutory officers of the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society \u2013 Str\u00e1\u017en\u00e1 v\u011b\u017e, biblick\u00e1 atraktivn\u00ed spole\u010dnost, the Czechoslovak branch, which represented the legal interests of these believers. Marie Vesel\u00e1 did not compromise her principles even in later years, as a result of which she was arrested during the Nazi occupation and taken to the Ravensbr\u00fcck concentration camp.\u00a0Jehovah’s Witnesses openly refused to support Nazi policies, and the Nazis persecuted them for it. Historian Pavla Plach\u00e1 from the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes describes the circumstances of the time in her book Zp\u0159etrhan\u00e9 \u017eivoty (Broken Lives): “The reason for the persecution of Jehovah’s Witnesses was their faith… In practice, their attitudes manifested themselves, for example, in their refusal to participate in elections, their rejection of the cult of Reich Leader Adolf Hitler, their refusal to give the Nazi salute, and the refusal of men to serve in the German army and women to work for the war industry.” At the same time, they openly spread a critical attitude towards the Hitler regime in their communities.
\nIn Bohemia and Moravia, over 200 Jehovah’s Witnesses were imprisoned by the Nazi occupiers for these attitudes. Some survived and returned home, others paid the ultimate price. Among them was Marie Vesel\u00e1, who died in Ravensbr\u00fcck on February 14, 1945.
\nThe Stolpersteine commemorating Marie Vesel\u00e1 in Mil\u00ed\u010dova Street in \u017di\u017ekov is also a symbolic reminder for another reason. It was Mil\u00ed\u010d of Krom\u011b\u0159\u00ed\u017e who was one of the first in Czech history to preach openly and independently from the Bible, for which he was thrown into prison by the Inquisition. Marie Vesel\u00e1 fought her small private battle for similar principles almost 600 years after the distinguished Mil\u00ed\u010d. A healthy pluralistic society needs examples of both, and others like them.<\/p>\n

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Address: MIL\u00cd\u010cOVA 425\/4, PRAGUE 3 NAR. 1901 ARESTED 20. 11. 1943 IMPRISONED IN RAVENSBR\u00dcCK MURDERED 14 .2. 1945 Marie Vesel\u00e1, n\u00e9e Scherberov\u00e1, was born on February 25, 1901, in Prague. As an adult, she worked as a senior clerk at the then well-known company Janka a spol. in Radot\u00edn, and later at the post office. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8896","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-praha"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8896","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8896"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8896\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11543,"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8896\/revisions\/11543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8896"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8896"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolpersteinecz.cz\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8896"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}