The Czech Mint presents the second woman Dagmar Šimková on the gold ducat from the National Heroes cycle.

At first it seemed that the whole world was lying at Dagmar Šimková´s feet. The daughter of a wealthy banker belonged to the cream of society in Písek. She lived in a luxury villa. She became an inmate of an elite monastic school, where she learned the principles of etiquette, piano and several foreign languages. She was smart, intelligent and beautiful, but also funny, confident and brave. She enjoyed modern music, visited coffee houses, and loved dancing… However, her life changed fundamentally after the communist coup in 1948. By decision of the national administrator, strangers moved into the family villa, and family Šimkovi had only one room left. Dagmar enrolled at the Faculty of Arts in Prague, but due to her "bourgeois origins", she could forget about her studies. While her sister Marta managed to escape to Australia, Dagmar stayed, and in order to cope with the bleak situation she wrote satirical posters that ridiculed presidents Gottwald and Zápotocký. At the same time, she provided shelter to two friends who had escaped from the military service and wanted to flee to the West… Dagmar Šimková was twenty-three years old when a commando of StB members came for her. She was sentenced to fifteen years in prison for "anti-state activities" and thus lost the best years of her life. When she left the prison gates before the Prague Spring. However, the occupation by "friendly troops" frustrated all hopes and dreams and Dagmar Šimková was forced to flee to Australia. She was finally able to lead a free life and did not hesitate to share her experience which will forever remain captured in her autobiographical book We Were There Too.

"The obverse side is dominated by a portrait of Dagmar Šimková inspired by a photograph taken before she had been arrested. In the upper part of the composition, in the inscription there is a part of the bold speech that Dagmar Šimková gave to the jury during her imprisonment - I AM SORRY THAT I COULD NOT DO MORE AGAINST THIS REGIME, “ explains the academic sculptor Jiří Dostál. "On the reverse side, behind the bars, there is a flying seagull - a symbol of freedom, screams of which the convict heard before the prison gate closed and then again at liberty in Australia. Number 23 with stylized petals expresses the period of youth, the number 14 expresses the years suffered in prison and the number 29 expresses the life years after release. In the upper part, in the inscription, there is the text THE TIME UNTIED THE CHAIN OF EVIL - a quote from the above-mentioned book which recalls the cruelty of the prison environment during the socialism era, " adds the author of the ducat.

The ducat is set in a spectacular packaging in the form of a book that contains a treatise written by the historian PhDr. Petr Koura, Ph.D. You can store the complete collection of National Heroes in a practical collector's box which you will also find in the offer of the Czech Mint.