“When we rode through Ležáky, smoke was still coming from some of the cottages.”
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Marta Kadlecová (née Spálenská) was born on the 5th of March 1929 in Proseč near Skuteč. Her father served as postmaster in Nové Hrady. During the war, he destroyed denouncements addressed to the Gestapo and helping partisans. In 1942, Marta Kadlecová witnessed the burning down of the village of Ležáky, an act of revenge for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. In May 1945, she and her mother raised the Czechoslovak flag on the post office building which lead to the arrest and nearly the shooting of her father. After the war, she graduated from a chemistry school in Prague. Initially, she worked in a sugar refinery, and later in the laboratory of the automobile factory in Mladá Boleslav. There she settled, got married and raised three children.
