“I was already married at that time. I lived with the Dedecius family. They came for him and said that they needed him to write something. Dad went with them and I have never seen him anymore.” Interviewer: “Have you found his body?” M.D.: “No. My sisters were walking around and searching for him in ditches and everywhere. They thought that they would find his body, but they have not. We don’t know what they have done to him.”
“We married in spite of our parents. His parents as well as mine. They objected against it and they did not want us to marry. Dad said that I belonged to the environment from which I came. The Dedecius family was well-to-do, Josef was their only son and they owned a farm with about 16 hectares of land. I was a daughter of a teacher and I did not have anything. We married during the Soviet era, and property thus did not matter anymore at that time.”
“Life has changed a lot. People did not care for property or power anymore. They only cared for saving their own lives, because those who were kulaks were transported to Siberia. Wealthy people were forced to pay high taxes. We were probably considered kulaks because my husband was sent to do forced labour. When he was a soldier they transported him away to do manual work. He worked on construction of a railroad. They were usually sending rich people there to do forced labour. They had to carry dirt on barrows. Well, it was no fun for us.”
Marie Dedeciusová, née Křivková, is a Volhynian Czech. She was born on August 18, 1920 in the Czech village Moldava, which was located in the territory of Volhynian Voivodeship, (in Poland at that time). Her father Antonín Křivka served in Volhynia as a teacher in Czech schools. In 1930 her family moved to the Czech village Novostavce. During the war she witnessed the Soviet as well as the German occupation of the region. Marie married Josef Dedecius, who was marked a Kulak, in May 1941. Shortly after their wedding, Dedecius was sent to work at the railroad construction between Brest and Kiev. Marie did not hear from him for one year, and Josef returned home only after Ukraine had become occupied by the German army. When the wehrmacht soldiers were pushed out of Ukraine, Josef volunteered to join the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps which fought alongside the Soviet army. He remained in the Czechoslovak units until the liberation. After demobilization, he was assigned to work on a farm in Libina. At the end of the war, the Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera sent troops through several Czech towns, including Marie’s hometown of Novostavce. Her father was among the many victims killed in the raids. In November 1945, Marie smuggled herself into a railway cart with wounded Czechoslovak soldiers, with hopes of joining her husband in Libina. She has lived in this village, in north-western Moravia, ever since.
