“One time my husband and I rode to Žamberk by bike. And suddenly I saw that they [the Russians - ed.] were urging on a herd of cows, so many cows! I went to the forest to circumvent them, I had a skirt and a white blouse, and braces. And suddenly they were right next to me: ‘A German wench!’ Because I had blond hair, and so I called to Mirek, he was stuck among the cows with his bike, and I asked him to come to me, and I ran to him. I was so afraid! They wouldn’t think twice, they didn’t pause before shooting when someone resisted them.”
“There were also such rascals who sent [the Soviets - ed.] after farm girls. And they went and straight off, they started shooting. And the girls ran from the window. When they came to Rybná, they had a commander stationed there, so they wouldn’t dare do that. We climbed up into the attic because they had pitched camp next door, at the Cabalkas. And Mum went to get some bread [by herself - ed.]... We were terrified, what would happen, if perhaps they’d catch Mum.”
Ludmila Kalousová, née Hynková, was born on 27 April 1923 in the village of Česká Rybná near Žamberk. She had six siblings. Her father managed a cement factory, which had Jewish owners. From the age of fifteen, Ludmila worked in Prague as a housemaid in the family of the director of the National Museum. Then she worked in a family of Jewish businessmen from Náchod; she was forced to leave in 1940. During the war she and her sister worked at a joiner’s shop. In 1945 Česká Rybná was liberated by the Red Army, and Ludmila experienced several conflicts with the soldiers. After the war she and her husband moved to Králíky, where they lived in a house belonging to deported Germans. In 1953 they lost all their savings because of the currency reform. She retired at the age of 55. She started making bobbin laces in her seventies. She and her husband raised two children. In 2016 she lived in Slatina nad Zdobnicí. Ludmila Kalousová died on 1st December 2020.
