Marta Ležáková

* 1935

  • "Then they started coming [from the state farms], pestering about the harvest, asking dad to give deliveries, and one day he got angry. We were just threshing to at least deliver something, but there was no time for that, we had to work in the fields, and the barn was threshed only in winter. The ransom man came in and started threatening dad. We were in the barn, dad took a pitchfork and shouted at him: 'Get out of the yard or I'll stick it in you!' And as he was running away. Who ever heard of a farmer threshing in the summer and leaving his crops in the field? But dad couldn't stand it for long, so he voluntarily gave his farm to the state."

  • "When the front - the Russians - came, the whole yard was covered with them. There was a night curfew, we couldn't even go to the dry toilet behind the barn. Grown girls had to hide from the Russians, they were warned that they were raping. Fortunately, they weren't there long and pulled out. At night, a shot rang out. Mum says: 'Gee, someone's been shot...' Well, in the morning, after the Russians had left, we went to see, and in a ditch not far from the village, a young lady was lying shot. She just had a piece of bread tucked behind her coat. Poor thing didn't even know there was a curfew."

  • "I remember it very well, and it was during the war, that adults were saying among themselves, 'Hey, they're going to hang Jews in Zelov, shall we go and see it?' My dad said, 'Who would go to see them hang people?'"

  • Full recordings
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    Teplá, 10.04.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:09:09
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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She started going to school in Czech at the age of eleven

Marta Ležáková
Marta Ležáková
photo: archive of the witness

Marta Ležáková was born on 17 July 1934 in Bujny Szlacheckie, Poland, near the town of Zélow. The area was inhabited by descendants of Czechs who went into exile for religious reasons after the Battle of White Mountain. In her native village she experienced the arrival of the Red Army up close. Soon after the war, she and her family repatriated back to Czechoslovakia, specifically to Hošťka near Teplá. In the 1950s, the communists nationalized her father’s farm, but she continued to work there until her retirement. In August 1968, she experienced the invasion of Teplá by Warsaw Pact troops. On a tour in the Soviet Union, the bus with her group got lost and she got to know the other side of the country. Marta Ležáková was living as a widow in 2024 in a nursing home in Teplá.