The sweet century. Women who defied a communist dictatorship

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Not much is known in the West of opposition to the Communist dictatorship that swept central Europe after World War II. This portrait of several remarkable Czech women who endured harsh imprisonment for their beliefs is a tribute to their strength, as well as their support of one another. One of the women profiled is Jitka Puflerova, who at age nineteen was sentenced to eighteen years for espionage, subversion and treason. Her real crime was belonging to the Socialist Party and participating in anti-government demonstrations. Their stories of the horrors of communist prisons are intercut with old propaganda films and archival footage. Dagmar Skalova was kept in high security custody for sixteen years. Her crime was to organize the boy scouts in a protest against the communist regime. She observed that "most of us survived without going mad was largely due to the fact that we were women." Despite the fact that their lives were torn apart by political events, they each return to Czechoslovakia to rebuild their lives with dignity.