“Mom had to cook for herself on the ship. She said that they were doing well there, there was a good doctor, and she danced with him, too. She would say, he took you on his belly, and as we danced, when there was something… The ship made several stops on the way, they were loading wood and coal, and eventually we arrived to Trieste and from there to Prague… Nobody cared for those who arrived as the last ones.”
“…They got hold of a wagon and a horse from Telegrafka and at first they moved the furniture for us from there, and then they sent there a worker from the factory who was doing some repairs for us so that we would be able to move in... Then we had to move again, that was when the Germans, or actually Russians, came, and we all had to leave from there. We still lived near Pracovna. Then we returned, we received an apartment, and Vilda was born there in 1946.”
“….In the place where we lived there were no shelters, nothing. Then there were the air raids and we had to move our furniture to the houses under the chateau, our apartment was damaged and we had to move out. Dad started working in Hradec, but grandpa Levínský worked for the railways and he knew some people from Telegrafka and they managed to get a wagon and transport our furniture and we were able to move there.”
“It was not particularly good when the Germans were here. My mom could not speak; she understood, she would listen to them, but then I moved away. I was already married… We kept applying for an apartment. Dad worked near Zavadilka in Pardubice, there was a cooperative and their offices there, and we learnt from them that four houses had been built near Pracovna. We had already submitted our application for an apartment… everything got cancelled at that time. In the office they told him: cancel it and write a new application, and he thus submitted it immediately, and since it was early, they received a one-room apartment. There was a stove in there.”
Ludmila Levínská, née Metteová, was born March 23, 1916 in Chelyabinsk. After her first husband had died, Ludmila’s mother Kristýna Kubištová lived with her children on a farm in the Volhynian Voivodeship in Ukraine. An Austrian deserter Karel Mette was assigned to work at the firm, and Ludmila’s mother became intimate with him. Without even knowing that he had conceived a child with her, he went to join the Czechoslovak Legions. Ludmila’s mother with her children had to leave and go to Chelyabinsk as the war front was advancing. Three of the siblings died of dysentery on the way and only Gustav and Albína survived. Ludmila was born in Chelyabinsk and the family accidentally met Karel Mette here. He began to take care of them and in 1920 he married Ludmila’s mother in Irkutsk. In the same year the family set out for a journey to Europe which lasted several months. They went by the cargo ship Teuger to the Trieste port and from there they travelled to Stolany near Pardubice to her father’s brother. The family then moved to Pardubice soon after. In 1939 Ludmila married Vilém Levínský. Their son Karel was born in 1940 (he died in 2003), and their second son Vilém was born in 1946 and he still lives in Pardubice. Ludmila’s brother Gustav was imprisoned during WWII for dissemination of anti-Nazi pamphlets. The house where they lived was damaged by bombing and in May 1945 it was taken over by the Red Army. In 1952 they received an apartment in the Dukla housing estate where Ludmila continued to live until 2014 when she moved to an old people’s home. She worked in the company Telegrafia (which later became Tesla) and in Pragooděv. Her husband worked as a paver. In 1983 he was hit by a car and Ludmila was then caring for him at home. He died in 1989. Ludmila Levínská celebrated her 100th birthday.
