“But father believed that the communists would fall, and that he would live to see it happen,” says Patrik.
“That’s true,” says Kamila. “But he also had the conviction that to destroy the communist regime was his mission in life. He was always talking with God and asking what is the right way. He always struggled to see the right values, and to live up to them.”
“This is something very important about my father,” says Marketa. “He believed that he was accountable before God, not before people. It didn’t matter to him when other people didn’t understand why he did the things he did. He acted in the sight of God. And you know, the Bible gave him strength, because it is full of stories of the prophets and others going beyond the border of what was comprehensible or understandable to people, for the sake of obeying the Lord.”
TEACH THEY ARE PART OF A WIDER MOVEMENT
The Bendas were founding members of Charter 77, the main Czechoslovak dissident community. Charter 77 was a 1977 document signed by over two hundred artists, intellectuals, and others, demanding that the communist regime respect human rights. Some of its signatories, including the playwright and future president Václav Havel, and Václav Benda, landed in prison for their advocacy.
“We pulled our children into our struggles,” says Kamila. “They had the feeling that we were all members of a group and had a common goal. They were raised to know that they were fighting for a good cause, for justice.”
It was not just a matter of holding the correct opinions and proper sentiments. The Benda children took risks on behalf of the resistance.
“Sometimes when we wanted to send something confidential, we would send one of the kids, because it was less likely that he would be captured,” recalls Kamila. “They also learned to swallow small pieces of paper with messages written on them if there was a danger of arrest.”
Being active in a wider movement for liberty, democracy, and human rights helped shape the Benda children in other ways. Though Václav and Kamila Benda held their Catholic beliefs uncompromisingly within the family, they showed their children by example the importance of working with good and decent people outside the moral and theological community of the church.
Patrik reminds me that his family were the only Christians involved in the movement in Prague. All other senior Charter 77 members were secular. Though most were strongly anti-communist in one way or another, one, Petr Uhl, was a self-described “revolutionary Marxist,” but one who believed that a Marxist state without human rights is not worth fighting for.
“In Charter 77, you had people of totally different worldviews and ideas joined together,” says Patrik. “You had, for example, democratic socialists on the one side and fervent Catholics on the other side. It was totally normal for me that as a small child, I was being raised in a community of people with very different opinions. So it shattered the bubble around me.”
The lesson of valuing diversity within a broader unity of shared goals is something that Christians today need to embrace.
“When we look at what’s happening in America today, we see that you are building walls and creating gaps between people,” he says. “For us, we are always willing to speak, to talk with the other side to avoid building walls between people. You know, it is much easier to indoctrinate someone who is enclosed within a set of walls.”
PRACTICE HOSPITALITY AND SERVE OTHERS
Kamila says that obeying Christ’s command to love one’s neighbor means never failing to stand up for every persecuted person, not just churchgoers. She brought up the people who would come by their apartment on their way to interrogation. Kamila was a den-mother figure who would share with them strategies for enduring police questioning, which could be quite harsh, without surrendering information.
Up to twenty people would show up every day at the Benda flat, seeking advice, comfort, and community. And after police released the suspects, they would often return to the Benda home. Whether or not they had come through without breaking, or had given up information under duress, Kamila offered them a cup of tea and a glass of wine and encouragement.
“Mom would tell them, ‘That’s okay, next time, you will do better,’” says Patrik. The dissident circle was too small and fragile to turn on one another, despite their failures, frustrations, and disappointments.
Kamila and I talk again about the communist-era teaching seminars the Bendas held in their apartment. It’s a practice her adult children have taken up. These days, Marketa hosts similar gatherings in the family apartment.
“She calls her salon Evenings with Cheese,” said Marketa’s niece, Klara, “because of her nickname. They call her ‘Mouse.’ She invites people she knows from the university, or through her work, and they will all talk about what they are doing.”
Patrik, who is also a host, says they screen a film once a month and invite groups of people to come watch it and talk about it. Sure, he says, you can watch anything you like in your own home, but there’s something unique about sharing the experience with others, and talking about it.
“I think one of the important things about this is that people actually like to meet and want to meet, but when you don’t have a subject to form the meeting around, it usually goes to waste,” says Klara, Patrik’s teenage daughter. “When you have the movie, then you can start from the movie. We end up having a conversation about high school exams and how much we hate them. That’s great, but the point is, you
