Danuška Lehárová

* 1923

Relative of a political prisoner, Witnesses of local events connected to WWII
1. 9. 1939 - The outbreak of the WW2
  • 1
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    Arresting her husband

    (audio)
    duration: 01:37
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    „You know, the mills were all working illegally. That is how it was, the villages around here (that is Chrudim), Dražkovice, there a wheat harvest was collected in fields, and saved and transported on a rack wagon (into the mill). My husband knew some police officers so he knew if the air was clear and they´d come with the wagon and the harvest was milled. Some bloke called Kratochvíl was in charge. In the mill flour was sold fifteen crowns for coarse and ten for smoothly milled and this Kratochvíl, who organised it would sell it in Prague for eighty. They caught him at Masarykovo station, so called flying commission, and it was a big issue. They took my husband on 17 March, 1943.“

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    Admission of guilt and sentence

    (audio)
    duration: 01:24
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    „He took it all on himself, as he used to say: ‚If anything was to happen, I shall cover you.‘ My father kept telling him repeatedly: ‚Do not do that, what if anything happens?‘ And my husband would say: ‚Come on, what could I do, when a mother with three children came to me kneeling, should I have chased her away?‘ So they interrogated him. The farmers from Dražkovice were also interrogated and they all confessed how much it was. My husband was imprisoned in March and sometime next year in January 1944 was taken away. I was not at the trial, I could not go, as I was pregnant. So I could not be present. He got five years and fifty thousand penalty fee.“

  • 3
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    Announcement of husband´s death

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    duration: 01:17
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    „About a month after the trial, and I did not know it at all, they took him to Bernau in Bawaria. My son-in-law once took me there about ten years ago. We went to have a look around and found his grave. He is buried in Prien, a county town. But it was not a lager, but a penitentiary. They still died there the same as in concentration camps. There were some swamps, peat bogs, and they were digging in there and my husband got ill. But I did no know about it, we had no connection. On 15 April 1944 I got an announcement of his death.“

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Pardubice, 15.10.2012

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    duration: 56:21
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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  • 2

    Pardubice a Praha, 20.03.2017

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    duration: 24:26
    media recorded in project Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
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It´s been a long time, but I keep remembering him. You cannot erase that.

dobova.jpg (historic)
Danuška Lehárová
photo: pořizoval Martin Reichl, soutěž
photo: pořizoval Martin Reichl, soutěž
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Danuška Lehárová (formally Veselá, née Kučerová) was born on 6 January, 1923 in Pilsen in a family of a chemist, Alois Kučera. She studied the State reform gymnasium in Pilsen and later attended a business school. She met her husband František Veselý in Nemošice near Pardubice and they married in 1941. The husband worked in a mill, which he co-owned. On 17 March, 1943 he was arrested for an economic offense and imprisoned. At that time the witness was already pregnant and in September 1943 she gave birth to their daughter Dana. František Veselý was sentenced to five years in prison and fifty thousand crowns penalty. In January 1944 he was taken to penitentiary Bernau in Bawaria and in March of the same year the witness received a message of his death. She stayed alone with her daughter and remarried later in 1968, for Ladislav Lehár. They live together in Pardubice.

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