“They began bringing over people from concentration camps. We commonly received some thirty or forty per day. The Americans transferred them here. Next to us there was a military hospital which was occupied by the US army. They had always put blankets on the ground next to our reception and piled up those people from the transport there. We would then carry them to the medical ward. They were so terribly slim that one could carry them on her own. They had about forty-five kilos. At the beginning they only received infusions because they were unable to even eat. It was an international mix made up of Italians, French, Hungarians… – various nationalities. But we lacked language skills. We could only speak a few words in German.”
“My husband was a political prisoner, though I wasn’t affected. They arrested him in 1950, he got out in 1953 and only later did we meet and get married. He was sentenced for conspiracy against the republic. They were a bunch of people who simply used to meet in a garage. And then suddenly, one of them got arrested – perhaps there was some subversive activity there… And then all of those who used to come there were arrested. So they were a large group. The prominent ones got twenty years. Karel was a liaison of sorts, receiving three years. He was a Protestant pastor. They also withdrew the state consent for his pastoral service which lasted nearly up to his death. He died soon after the revolution in 1990. He didn’t even live to see his rehabilitation – it was me who applied for it.”
“Back then, it was at the time when no antibiotics were available. I had my first experience with penicillin brought over by the US troops. There was a young boy there who had a heart membrane inflammation. He would have been done for, hadn’t it been for that penicillin. Our doctor contacted the US doctor and they gave us the first batch. It was managed strictly – we as nurses used to go get it from a senior doctor. Sometimes we would say: ‘Doctor, give us an additional glass!’ And he said: ‘Don’t you have some lover in there?’ We replied: ‘Well, yes, we have this young lad there.’ He said: ‘Well, okay’, and gave us an extra glass. That always made us happy. And this Dr. Vrzala always said: ‘Girls, go get it yourself. Because he only gives me what belongs to me but you always get an extra glass.”
Marie Hrbková, née Jandová, was born in August 1922 in Prague as the eldest of three children. When she was five her family moved to a small farm in Kanice in the Domažlice region. There she had spent her childhood and youth. She recalls the 1938 mobilization and evacuation following the Munich Agreement. As an 18-year-old she moved back to Prague to attend a medical school. Following graduation she worked as a nurse for the rest of her life. She had witnessed the terror in response to Reinhard Heydrich’s assassination in 1942, as well as the end of the war. At eighteen years of age she converted to from Catholicism to Protestantism. After the liberation she had moved to Pilsen for a few years. There, she looked after the returning prisoners from concentration camps. The Americans distributed medical drugs and Marie found out about penicillin for the first time. In 1950 she got married and moved with her husband Jaroslav Kvaček who was an RAF veteran to Prague. However, unlike many others, he wasn’t persecuted by the communists. Thanks to his friendship with the director of the Ruzyně airport he was able to work as his deputy. The couple had a son Pavel. After seven years of marriage her husband left her and she stayed alone with her son. In 1960 she got married for the second time. Her other husband Karel Hrbek was imprisoned by the communists from 1950 till 1953 in a fabricated trial for subversion. Up until 1950 he served as a protestant pastor. Following release from prison he wasn’t allowed to serve as a clergyman anymore and for the rest of his life worked in blue-collar jobs, mostly as a driver. The couple became friends with Helena Klímová, wife of the writer Ivan Klíma, who had supplied them with samizdat literature. They had also made friends with the Protestant pastor Miloš Rejchrt. In 1970 Marie’s son Pavel died tragically in a car accident. Her husband Karel Hrbek passed away in 1990 - the same year that he was fully rehabilitated. Marie Hrbková died on 3rd July 2018.
