"I got my placement in the locomotive depot at Pavlovice in Olomouc. And Pavlovičky is close to Hodolany and my dad, when he was in the resistance, was very focused on Hodolany. He helped there, I guess they got that by order somehow, those families who had husbands and fathers locked up during the war. The National Defence helped them, brought them food, for example. That's what they gave them, and then they delivered it. And when I came to the railroad, they found out that I was working in the locomotive depot, and they sent a citizen of Hodolansky there. And he came to the depot, to our office, and he opened the door and asked the manager if there was a Miss Šrámková working there. She showed him where I was sitting, so he came up to me and said, 'I was sent by the Hodolany people to come and thank you for your father, for taking such good care of us Hodolany citizens during the war.' And I remembered now recently that at that time there was such a terrible silence in that office that you could call it grave silence. And then this one lady couldn't stand it any longer, and she stood up and went out and said, 'I've never experienced anything so beautiful.'"
"He was awarded the Czechoslovak War Cross. He received it in memoriam, after his death. And that award was presented to us on 28 October 1945 in front of the Olomouc City Hall. I received the decoration for my father and my grandfather received it for my uncle. And it was handed over to us by army general Ludvík Svoboda, he was such an elderly gentleman. And when he gave me the decoration, he shook my hand and told me: 'Little girl, I wish you good luck in life and to always do honour to your father's name.' And that’s what I’ve been striving for my entire life. And I'd look at him and I'd see that he had tears in his eyes. And then I made it out that he was crying, but I was told that he wasn't crying, but that he seemed sorry that he had never given honors to a little child like me."
"On May 1, I know that the word went around the village that the war was over, that the Czechoslovak Republic had become independent, and the Germans took it very badly, they were nervous about it. They left a car on the road, they ran away from it, and the car was full of weapons. The weapons were taken by various citizens, if they needed them they would use them. That's what happened then. In the evening they wanted to use the weapons, but they found that the German military superiority was so great that they couldn't do it. So they threw the guns away. There were ponds, so they threw the guns into the water. And they did that well, because they didn't find the weapons. But one threw a rifle near the German shelter and one German thought to look there and found the rifle. And that was the end of it. Once he found the rifle, they made a connection with the partisans and drove them through the village to the school. There's still a God's torment by the school. That was their last stop. There the Germans told them that if they didn't surrender voluntarily, they would liquidate the village by morning. And they knew they could do it, see Lidice or Ležáky. So they left and never came back."
Libuše Kratochvílová, née Šrámková, was born as the only child of Maxmilián and Hedvika Šrámková on 19 August 1936 in Kožušany near Olomouc. Mum sold in an electrical shop, dad was a machine locksmith. In July 1939, mum Hedvika died of tuberculosis and grandmother Ludmila Šrámková began to take care of little Libuška. During World War II, her father Maxmilián Šrámek joined the resistance activities of the Defence of the Nation, where he was in charge of taking care of the families from Hodolany who were persecuted by the Nazis. At the end of the war, he was involved in the local uprising in Kožušany and, together with his brother, was one of the 14 citizens arrested. He was imprisoned by the Nazis at the military headquarters in Olomouc and executed a few days before the end of the war in the grounds of Fortress 13. Both he and his brother Antonín Šrámek were awarded the Czech War Cross in memoriam for their activities. His father’s resistance activities were gradually revealed to the surviving family after the war. After her father’s death, Libuše Kratochvílová grew up with a peculiar grandmother who did not allow her to develop a strong singing talent. She graduated from the school of economics and worked first on the railroad and later in a brickyard in Blatec as an accountant. In 1957 she married Vlastimil Kratochvil, with whom she had two children. All her life she devoted herself to singing, at least on an amateur level. She never joined the Communist Party, although she was urged to do so, and always tried to honour her father’s memory. In 2024, she lived at the St. Anne’s Home for the Peaceful Aged in Velká Bystřice.
