Life under the red star
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Marie Lauermannová (née Mazánková) was born on 31 July 1942 in Postřelmov, Zábřežsko. Her father, Richard Mazánek, was a forced labourer in Most during the Second World War, where he carried out sabotage and managed to escape. His steps led to his wife and children in Postřelmov. But there, hidden in a chimney, he was sniffed out by police dogs. Richard was detained in the infamous Šumperk workhouse. From there he was taken to one of the branches of the Nazi concentration camp Gross Rosen in the Podkrkonoší region. Marie’s father went through the death march and died there just before the liberation of Flossenbürg. The family did not learn the date of his death until the mid-1960s and his grave was never found. Marie Lauermannová graduated from the Fučík Pedagogical High School in Olomouc, where the basic requirement for students was to leave the church. After graduating in 1960, the witness entered university as a future mathematics and art teacher. Four years later, she married Jiří Lauermann and they moved to Štíty in the Šumperk region, where they both taught elementary school. Marie Lauermannová lived her life in close proximity to the Soviet occupation garrisons, but also in compulsory association with the Soviet school in Červená Voda. In the aftermath of the Velvet Revolution, the headmistress of this school wrote to her from Leningrad asking Marie to write six letters of invitation for prominent Soviet families who wanted to leave the country for free Czechoslovakia. She refused. In 1990 she was elected as a member of the city council, a position she held for the next twelve years. At the time of the interview she was living in Štíty, where she still ran a ceramics and art club at her primary school.
