"It was after the war, and suddenly they brought a letter to my father saying that Frantík was looking for his parents in Bělá pod Bezdězem. Of course, he couldn't find them there, so he wrote to our uncle from Ždírec, who gave him our address. I remember my mother was cooking lunch when the gentleman came with the letter. She read it and said: 'Frantík is writing to us! Children, come quickly!' They immediately brought the letter to my father at the factory where he worked. The director immediately told him that if he can get a paper so that the Russians wouldn't take his car, he would lend it to him with a driver so that he could go to see Frantík in Pilsen. They were in the camp in front of the demarcation line and were not allowed to go any further. My dad arrived there and was told that Frantík was washing himself down by the river. When they told him they brought his dad, he threw everything in the water, ran out, grabbed dad and spun him around. He was such a little kid when he left and now he was bigger than his dad. My father often recalled that beautiful reunion."
"One day in the evening the partisans came, frozen and hungry. It was a solitude where only two families lived. The partisans came, dad knew Russian, so he took them home. They gave them food, clothes, gloves and hats. Dad told them he didn't understand Morse's code and showed them to go outside with him. He showed them the wires through which the Germans communicated in Morse code, explaining he did not know Morse code. They stood there for a while, listening and thanking my father profusely. They were paratroopers who jumped down, and they probably didn't know where they were. They told dad to go to the SS [Schutzstaffel, transl.] the next day and say that he was ambushed by partisans the day before. ‘You have children, they can say something and you will be in trouble. We will be gone by tomorrow morning. And you will send them in another direction.’ Then we didn't hear from them ever again."
"When my father was in Bělá pod Bezdězem, he helped the partisans. Since he was a road mender, he used to tell us about how the Germans drove in their armoured cars trying to pick up a radio signal. And dad, as he was on the road, knew about it and signalled to certain people not to broadcast because they were being watched. The father was in trouble because of it. When the Germans started coming after him, he moved from Bělá pod Bezdězem to the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands. Then our family moved away again. We were in Škrdlovice. The housekeeper, Mrs Pálková, was there. She denounced my father to the Germans telling them he listened to Radio Free Europe. They then took my father to Jihlava probably three times, beat him there and wanted to know where his son was. But he truly didn't know where Frantík was the whole time. Then they always took his blood to supply the soldiers. Then the parents moved to a secluded place, where we lived until the war ended."
Ludmila Doležalová, née Stará, was born on 26 June 1939 in Bělá pod Bezdězem. Her brother František Starý left the border illegally a few months later and went to fight in the foreign resistance. Meanwhile, the witness’s father secretly helped the partisans. Her brother did not meet the family until May 1945. In September 1945, Ludmila Doležalová started attending elementary school in Ploskovice and enjoyed the reunion with her brother. However, after the communist coup in February 1948 and the brother’s emigration to England, the family faced persecution. Due to financial difficulties, the witness had to work in the fields instead of going to school. After completing compulsory schooling, she did not even have the opportunity to study further because of a bad personnel report. At the age of fourteen, she started working two shifts at the Chemical Works in Lovosice, and in 1955 she married Jan Doležal, a Czech from Volyně. At the beginning of the 1960s, the couple moved to Litoměřice, where the witness worked in the Poultry Factory and then as a maid in a restaurant and canteen. In 1992, she started working in her son’s shop selling watches and jewellery. Two years later, she retired, and at the time of filming (2023), she still lived with her husband in Litoměřice.
