“As I already told you, in the Vichr factory I was welding radiators for generators with an oxy- acetylene torch. We had to take a two-month course for welders. I remember that all our clothing was burnt through by dripping wires. The radiators leaked everywhere, because we did not do it properly. It was our form of silent resistance. Next to our workplace there was an electric welding shop and it did a lot of damage to our eyes. We worked in morning and afternoon shifts and we only had a lunch break and coffee break. During the breaks they were giving us black coffee, I called it ‘churifinda,’ and dry bread. When there were air raids, sirens sounded and we had to run out to the fields and forests. We would stay outside until the end of the alarm was sounded by sirens, and at these moments we would always talk and get to know each other.”
Libuše Caltová (née Blechová) was born December 30, 1921 in Lysá nad Labem. Her mother died when she was four years old. Libuše attended school in Litol, and it was mainly her elder brother who took care of her at that time. When she completed the elementary school in 1935, she began apprenticing as a milliner. While doing the apprenticeship she met her first husband-to-be for the first time. A week after their wedding her husband was sent to Berlin to do forced labour there and Libuše was ordered to start working in the company Vichr and Co. in Lysá nad Labem. She did hardwork, welding with oxy-acetylene torch, and she experienced air raids by allied airplanes during which she also got to know her second husband. After the war she went to the border region where she worked in millinery stores, in cafés, restaurants, and also in a shop selling gramophone records. Since that time she still remembers various opera arias even at her current age of 94 years. In protest against the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies in 1968 she tore her member card of the labour unions. She outlived even her third husband and at the time of recording, she was living in the seniors’ home in Prague 8 - Ďáblice.
