Libuše Macková

* 1921  †︎ 2023

  • "In Jedlí, Juránek, Filip and Pavlík were hanged. They hanged the three of them in the morning, left them there all day, and then in the evening they were taken down and driven to Opava. I was just having a holiday. I worked at Knott's mill. And when we got there, the people who were closed there but weren't allowed to look, reportedly, they said that they had heard them shouting, 'Long live our children, long live the republic.' And we asked the Gestapo, as they came to tell us, if we could bury them, and they said no. So they took them to Opava and buried them in Opava."

  • "Martin... When they were arrested, they were in Šumperk. I don't know how it happened. There were more people from Jedlí. They only said that Martin had been brought to the cell in a tarpaulin. And the other one from Jedlí, who was there with him, when he saw him being brought in beaten, he hanged himself in that room (Jan Popíšil - editor's note). And his mother (Cecile Pospíšilová - editor's note) was in Opava and she hanged herself in Opava. The day before, we were in Šumperk with his wife. They had two children, I think, and so we were there. You could already see that he was devastated, and the next morning they were hanged in Jedlí."

  • "My younger brother Jeník was working in Germany. When my brother was hanged, the Gestapo came to us and asked where my brother [Jeník] was. They said that when he would come back he should report himself. He could escape and not turn up. The brother who was hanged, he had had a chance to escape, too. But we were a big family and they were afraid we'd be all arrested. So they didn't want to run away and they all let themselves be arrested instead. A bit later, they led my brother Jeník handcuffed and he was imprisoned in Opava, where he spent five months in solitary confinement."

  • "The brother who was hanged later had wanted to go to Russia. My parents wanted to go there too. They were afraid of Hitler. They left everything and went. In Mohelnice, where the Germans were already staying, they didn´t let him go any further and my brother had to go back. There were many people who left the borderlands."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Červená Voda, 27.04.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 02:24:53
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Červená Voda, 23.07.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 48:22
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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After my brother was hanged, dad´s hair turned completely grey

Libuše Macková
Libuše Macková
photo: witness´s archive

Libuše Macková was born on 8 March 1921 as one of twelve children to parents Martin and Maria Pavlík in the village of Jedlí in the Zábřeh region. During World War II, she served in a mill in Zábřeh, where Jaroslav Tůma, one of resistance leaders in Zábřeh, worked as an accountant. He died during a firefight with the Germans on 8 July 1944. Her brother, Martin Pavlík, was executed in Jedlí on 10 July 1944 for involvement in resistance. Her younger brother Jeník and sister Jarmila spent several months in Nazi prisons. Although her father´s hair turned grey overnight due to the horror of losing his son, he did not lose his courage and dug a bunker in the woods near his field, where three Soviet fugitives and a Pole were hiding in the spring of 1945. After the war, Libuše served on a farm in Červená Voda, then worked as a cleaner in a school for non-commissioned officers and later, until her retirement, in a textile factory. In 1949 she married Jan Macek and a year later their only daughter Stanislava was born. At the time of filming in 2021, she was living in Červená Voda. Libuše Macková passed away on May, the 15th, 2023.