I’ve prepared the dough for bread, go there and bake it
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Milena Ledvinková was born on 6 August 1928 in the South Bohemian village of Buk, which became part of the Sudetenland during the war and where she lived through the war years and the subsequent displacement of the German population. As a child, she listened to her grandfather’s stories about being captured in Russia, and she herself has memories of a joyful childhood when Czechs and Germans lived together without problems and children played together. In October 1939 she experienced the occupation of Buk by the German army. Unlike some Czech families, they did not leave and stayed in the Sudetenland. Milena Ledvinková had to go to a German school, later to a German burgher school, and then she was employed in agriculture and with a German seamstress. During the war, the family maintained the library of the Pošumava Unity, which was an association that maintained awareness of the Czech minority among the German population. After the war, she experienced displacement and lost her closest friend, whom she did not even have time to say goodbye to. In the 1950s, the family had to join a unified agricultural cooperative (JZD), and gave up their two hectares of fields there. She worked as a seamstress, got married in 1952 and had children, a daughter and a son. Her husband, Václav Ledvinka, was a plumber who finished his industrial school and worked as a foreman on construction sites. The year 1968 found them abroad, but they did not want to emigrate. Milena Ledvinka was living in Jindřichův Hradec in 2024, and the family still has their cottage in Buk.
