I had a very good friend - Radko Klein. At one time, when I came to Budějovice, I was still in college, so he invited me to come to them in the evening. I promised, but I didn't feel well enough and then I learned that there was a bunch of guys from our class. We were a classical gymnasium, so they were also there from a small seminary - it was a preparation for becoming a priest. The boys got together, they were very smart guys. Radko was from a former diplomatic family. They packed up and left, so they wanted to take me with them. I missed it then, but I thought that if they helped me to leave Volary, I would go. But I learned at the last moment that a girl of seventeen, in the seventh grade, who was Radko's love, when Radko left, was locked up in solitary confinement for three months. His mother was sent to "stick" bags in the Pankrác in prison. My dad was still in active service at the time, and I realized that I would destroy the whole family with my escape. I could not do that.
My birth name is Fritzová, written in German, and my father also spoke German. So they pulled him out of the factory and he was supposed to be an interpreter for a German, it was von Strobl. And unfortunately. Dad said he had to liquidate a sea of letters when the Czechs reported the Czechs. After the war, even though my mother was cheering, my father said don't rejoice, the Bolsheviks would come and it would be bad too. Of course, my father was described as a collaborator, so we were in danger of having to go to Germany with the Germans, but it turned out that von Strobl was also an English agent. So, of course, that freed him from all suspicions.
"Plojhar came to power here with us. Plojhar was a pastor, but he was very much in favour of the party and the government, so he was made minister of health and was also in the People's Party. And he was then excommunicated from Rome. I was then asked what I was saying to [Bishop] Vincent. I didn't have much money then, because I didn't get a scholarship, so I said that I just had the money and that I didn't have time left for the newspaper and I just didn't know what it was about. And what I say to Plojhar and his ex-communication. I said that he was an older gentleman and that he knew what he was doing, and I, a student, could not criticize him. You're making excuses, to get money for the newspaper so you are expelled from the university."
"One day in February 1948, it was a lecture on anatomy - Boravanský. The tickets began to go around the auditorium, everyone come to the courtyard of the hospital in Karlák. And when Borovanský finished his lecture, he called for calm. I still didn't understand what was going on. It wasn't until I came to the courtyard that a window opened in a small building, and two students peeked out and started shouting on behalf of the medical school's action committee. They didn't get any further because they were called, what committee are they, who are they. And someone even threw a stone at them, so they closed the window and it was over. An anthem began to be sung and it was said: We are going to the Castle. At that time, the gentlemen wore hats, or a hat in their hands, just as they go to the funeral, we went to Prague, we went to the Castle. "
"When [German signs] were torn down, my mother and I went to the streets and I cried. My mother said to me then: Don't be ashamed of those tears. The enthusiasm for being free again cannot be expressed in words. However, people from the concentration camp went and I signed up here as a nurse - I was in the seventh grade - in repatriation camps. There I met just the people who were returning in a poor state. There was even one German, who was returning. Nobody wanted to go to help him. At the same time, he was a man who was also put in a concentration camp for his opinions. I came to work one morning and people carried compotes and everything anyone had for the former prisoners. And that pantry was once empty. I was sixteen. So I got all the men on board and started explaining to them that there was peace, that they no longer have to be afraid. That they will have something to eat and to sign up or just whisper to me whoever took it. That I will not judge him. Those guys went and swore they didn't take it. I was horrified to find out that a Czech took it. "
Božena Krejčová, nee Fritzová, artistic pseudonym Bedřiška Znojemská, was born on June 2, 1928 in Znojmo. She studied at the grammar school in České Budějovice and after the war medicine at Charles University in Prague. During inspections in 1951, she was banned from studying at any university in Czechoslovakia. In the personnel questionnaire, she answered the question of her relationship with the collective as follows: “Love your neighbour as yourself.” Since then, she has devoted herself intensively to art. She studied with academic painters F. Ketzek and E. Frynta. In 1959, she married Bořivoj Krejčí and together they devoted themselves mainly to sacra; works. In 1987, she and her husband enjoyed great success at an exhibition in Zurich. Among other awards, she holds two gold medals from the International Talent Exhibition in Stockholm. However, the Czechoslovak media were silent about her before 1989, as she was a practising Catholic, whose work was and is imbued with deep faith. She herself was a model of a person who was not broken by totalitarianism and the time of rigid normalization. Even in her nineties, she devoted herself to painting and organizing exhibitions. Božena Krejčová died on December 18, 2021.
