Ivana Trump And Czechoslovak State Security

Ivana Zelníčková was born 20. February 1949 in Czechoslovakia (died14thJuly 2022 New York). The city where she was born was renamed Gottwaldov a few weeks before her arrival in the world in honor of the first communist Czechoslovak president, Klement Gottwald. Before this renaming, the city was called Zlín and regained its name in 1990 after the velvet revolution.

          Klement Gottwald was first communist president in Czechoslovakia since 1948 and he was directly responsible for the deaths of many dozens of his opponents, collaborators and innocent people following the stalinist line of politics. During his reign, many political trials took place in the early 1950s, and political terror was unleashed: over 230 death sentences were handed down, over 100,000 citizens were sentenced to life or many years in prison.

         The town Zlín was before the war connected with businessman Tomáš Baťa - "King of shoes" (I have written blog about him which you can read here) and evidently the communists wanted people to forget about the Baťa period and instead of the original name of the town praise the communist president.

Ivana Zelníčková was talented, she skied from the age of four, and later got into the Czechoslovak representation team. In 1970, she also starred in the popular children's television series. In 1972, she received a master's degree, having completed her studies in physical education at Charles University.

In November 1971, Ivana entered into a pragmatic marriage with Austrian skier Alfred Winklemeier. Thanks to this, in the spring of 1972, she received an emigration passport and could legally travel to Austria " for the purpose of living with her husband." She opted for this solution, because emigration from communist Czechoslovakia had unpleasant consequences. In absentia, the emigrants were sentenced to prison for illegally leaving the Republic and could not return home on visits. She received Austrian passport and next year she divorced.

In 1976 Ivana met Donald Trump and in April 1977 they married. With this marriage, Ivana became a tempting target for the Czechoslovak secret police (State security = STB ). 

      Document about a meeting at secret police in July 1989. The "source" said he knows the Zelníček family more then 20 years

Information about Trump family was drawn by Secret Service agents directly from Ivana´s father Miloš Zelníček. He had the code name Miloš and was listed as a confidential agent of the secret service. However, the Constitutional court does not consider the trustees to be conscious collaborators of STB. As was the case with Zelníček, the confidant always met with the STB and answered several questions. About the fact that they are led as collaborators, these people had no idea. Miloš was therefore allowed to go to his daughter, but he had to inform her about his stay abroad. "He provided information that they learned anyway from someone else. There (in Zelníček's volume) are almost no compromising materials that he should hand over,“ said Petr blažek, a historian from the Institute for the study of totalitarian regimes.

     Permission to travel to Czechoslovakia for Ivana and Donald junior, stay for 14 days at her father M.Zelníček

However, the secret police had other associates who worked professionally. Tracking emigrants was among the main tasks. State security set up a separate  surveillance unit on Ivana Trump on June 6. April 1978. Whether this documents exists somewhere today is not officially known. The goal of the STB, which led the union in cooperation with intelligence service, was to find out the Trump family's ties to government and power circles in the United States. STB had information from informants about Trump's family, business activities or ambition to become president.

Czechoslovak Secret police received information about Trump of a personal nature, for example, about what he hired governesses for his son. The reports also related to the expansion of his business activities or support for candidates in the US presidential elections. According to the dossier, he began to consider the presidency in 1986, but due to the low age of 41, he has so far refused to do so.

However, some of the records of secret police were found - in one of them it is written:

[ ... ] she is currently on vacation in Hawaii [ ... ] she no longer makes a mannequin, but helps her husband in business – she designs interior fittings in construction sites that [his] firm finances. For son [Donald Jr.], she has two governesses-one is American, one is from Switzerland, " states, for example, in a report of the Gottwaldov STB branch from March 1980.
"The appointee [Ivana Trump has] a very good position and unlimited financial possibilities [ ... ] the husband of the appointee is the owner of a company that finances the construction of hotels, hospitals and other objects directly in New York and other US states, according to a report [confidant], her husband was involved in the election campaign of the current US President [Jimmy] Carter.“

In November 1979, Ivana Trump appeared with her two-year-old son in Czechoslovakia. In Prague, her parents picked her up at the airport and STB monitored everything.

Of course, Trump's family was quite extraordinarily interesting to the Czechoslovak secret police. However, watching emigrants and their friends abroad was nothing special. The secret police often turned to those Czechoslovak citizens who went on business trips to the west and tried to commit them to closer cooperation. Even if they refused to do so, there was, in theory, an obligation to report on their return from capitalist states who they had met and what they had talked about.

                    We hope these times will never return

                                                                                 Margaret

About: Markéta Soleo. (Czech Republic) My life's work is about helping individuals

to greater freedom through joy and purpose without self-sabotage, so that inspirational legacy can

serve generations to come. Find me at my Markethive Profile Page | My Twitter Account