"Sometime in January he sent a message to my brother Lada asking if he could invite me to visit him. So of course I agreed, it was planned for the summer, I don't know exactly what month. But the amnesty came into it, thank God." - "And what made him think of you? Did you keep in touch, did you correspond?" - "He remembered me through Lada and Bozenka, they must have mentioned me in their letters." - "Did he ever tell you about what he had experienced in Jáchymov and in Příbram, what he had experienced in the mines there, or directly in the barracks where the prison was?" - "Yes, but very little."
"When it broke here in Jizerka, he was there, he had an accident on his motorcycle and was in hospital in Frýdlant. So he escaped arrest, and it was only afterwards, as they were finding out the details, that he was arrested during the investigation." - "When the scouts were there in the bunker in Jizerka and were planning resistance against the communists, did he know about them?" - "He knew about them, but he didn't reveal them. He advised them to stop, that it was of no use, that they couldn't do anything. Of course they didn't listen to him and that's how it ended. Apparently, even by questioning these people, they found out that he was quite involved in it, and that's why they arrested him afterwards."
"So we waited in Old Town Square for the end. When the men walked, every step they took was like 'Beneš, Beneš', it was such an experience. Beneš." - "And how did that affect you?" - "As you can see..." - "That it moved you a lot?" - "Touched."
"I lost my neighbours in the displaceent, of course, we lived in a small house and next door was a bakery and a shop, the Adolfs had it. It was such a Czech name, originally they were Czech, but Mrs. Adolf was German, she couldn't speak Czech. She came to say goodbye to my father, they were some kind of a moving party, they came early in the morning, I don't know how long it took before they were allowed to take everything. They could have had some of those 30 kilos. She came to say goodbye to dad. She said to dad, 'So viele Jahre gute Nachbaren' - so many years of being good neighbours. I was so sorry, we were really like that. I used to babysit for them on Saturdays, they had a bakery and a shop, the lady needed to be in the shop, well, sort of at first, just that I was going to walk with the pram. Then it turned out that Saturday afternoons, I used to babysit first - they had it after two and after four years, I used to babysit, the girl, then the boy I used to help raise a little bit on Saturdays when the lady was in the shop, I used to raise him a little bit, for babysitting I got a slice of bread over the whole loaf, buttered, usually it had either salami or cheese on it, it alternated, sliced cheese and cucumber."
"Thanks to the industry, people were not so bad off, not that they had a great time, but they found a living here. I remember a statement of one, it was Jarka Blažků. He used to walk with the communists in the May Day parades, they were Germans. He said - We shouted 'Wir wollen Arbeit und Brot!' - and we had a knacker in our pocket. That's what they called the little sausages. He wanted bread and work - and the sausage was in his pocket. They weren't that bad either."
"When a German married a Czech woman, they had a German family, but when a Czech married a German woman, they also had a German family, the Germanness prevailed here. I don't know how people benefited from that. The Czechs were in the minority. It was necessary to keep Czechism alive, there was a Czech school, thank God. Even though dad had mostly German customers, he only gave us both a Czech school. We also had a fourth year, which was sort of an extra something extra. Pepa was trained as an electrician, the year 1938 came and the Germans occupied us, so out of fear, because it was known that there would be a war, they sent Pepa to Úlibice to his aunt, thinking that there he would be protected somehow. Here, I guess my parents thought he would have to enlist in the war. But those Czechs who stayed here and claimed Czechness didn't have to go to war."
Marie Hladíková, née Valešová, was born on 18 March 1921 in Smržovka in the Jizera Mountains. The town called Morchenstern was inhabited mostly by Sudeten Germans, Marie Hladíková’s mother and father were Czech. She attended the Czech school in Smržovka and the Czech town school in Tanvald. In 1937 she joined the textile company Lederer and Wolf, which belonged to Jewish owners. After the Munich Agreement and the occupation of the Sudetenland in the autumn of 1938, the company was taken over by the Germans and the original owners never returned to Tanvald. After the seizure of the Sudetenland, the parents of the witness sent her brother Karel to live with their aunt in the Czech interior. They were afraid that he might join the German army. They themselves stayed in Smržovka because they had a house there. Marie Hladíková and her relatives survived the Second World War unscathed. They lost many of their German neighbours in the deportation. She was saddened by the communist takeover in 1948. In June of that year, she practiced at the All-Sokol meeting and witnessed the support the Sokol members expressed for former President Edvard Beneš. After 1948, she met SNB (National Security Corps) officer Karel Hladik and fell in love with him. However, he did not reciprocate the feelings. In 1952, he was arrested by the State Security for his collaboration with a Scout resistance group, dispersed near the settlement of Jizerka in the summer of 1949. The court sent Karel Hladik to prison for 25 years for treason. The witness did not marry and waited for him. In January 1960, they arranged for her to visit him in prison in the summer. In May, President Antonín Novotný declared an amnesty and Karel Hladík was set free. He and the witness soon married and in 1961 their daughter Jitka was born. In August 1968, during the occupation of Czechoslovakia, they were on holiday by the Black Sea in Bulgaria, their daughter stayed at home with her grandmother and they were very worried about her. Karel Hladík died in February 1990 - three months after the fall of the communist regime. His wife and daughter successfully applied for his judicial rehabilitation. In 2022, Marie Hladíková was living in Smržovka.
Siblings Marie Valešová (Hladíková) and Josef Valeš (2.3.1919 - 23.9.1993) Valeš during holidays with their mother's parents Anna and Václav Srazil in Ostřetín near Holice in Czech
Siblings Marie Valešová (Hladíková) and Josef Valeš (2.3.1919 - 23.9.1993) Valeš during holidays with their mother's parents Anna and Václav Srazil in Ostřetín near Holice in Czech
Marie Valešová (Hladíková) and her brother Josef with their parents Marie and Václav Valeš on the occasion of their silver wedding in the second half of the 1930s
Marie Valešová (Hladíková) and her brother Josef with their parents Marie and Václav Valeš on the occasion of their silver wedding in the second half of the 1930s
The staff of the first revolutionary national committee in Smržovka after World War II, thanks to her knowledge of German and administration, included Marie Valešová. She is in the striped dress pictured on the right with her friend Stanislava Patrmanová
The staff of the first revolutionary national committee in Smržovka after World War II, thanks to her knowledge of German and administration, included Marie Valešová. She is in the striped dress pictured on the right with her friend Stanislava Patrmanová
