"My husband did not agree with the occupation and he was a, today one would say, a supply manager. The company had three thousand employees and his job was to provide materials. So he flew to Košice from this airport and returned on the same day. In 1965, they gave him an ultimatum. Either he joins the Party or goes to the company-run secondary technical school. He had studied at a business academy in Liberec and ran a shop with four employees before he served in the army. But then, his father died, he was from Slavíkov and his mother wanted him to come back. So he started working in the factory and in 1968, he disapproved of the occupation and he had no clue that there was a snitch in their office so he was the first one to be kicked out."
"He drove them across Lány and Předboř as far as Jeníkovec. It's about five kilometres. But he couldn't join the main road with those horses because it was so full of cars which slowly mowed up towards Seč. And all the motorbikes and and soldiers on foot, Germans. And that colonel, when he saw what was going on, Pospíšil knew a bit of German, so he asked him to go back. They got off the cart and Pospíšil could go in the opposite direction. He drove the horses up the meadow thinking that he would get home somehow. He only heard five gunshots behind him. The colonel turned around and shot all his family dead, and then he killed himself. Víšek family it was theirs, that meadow, did one thing, they wrapped all of them in tarps and buried them at the meadow hoping that soon, some office, German and ours, will take care of that. And later that year, a permit was granted and in July or August, someone came to pick them up.
„Vyvezl je přes Lány, Předboř až do Jeníkovce. To je takových pět kilometrů. A tam prostě se s koňma do té silnice nemohl už vůbec píchnout, protože to bylo jedno auto narovnaný za druhým, se to pohybovalo nahoru k Seči. Do toho ty motorky a síla pěších vojáků, Němců. A ten plukovník když viděl, co je, Pospíšil trochu německy uměl, tak ať jede zpátky. Oni vystoupili a Pospíšil jak mohl jet zpátky proti tomu proudu...? Vzal to po louce a říkal, nějak se domů dostanu. Za sebou slyšel už jenom pět výstřelů. Ten plukovník se otočil a postřílel celou svoji rodinu i sebe. Víškovi, co byla jejich louka, udělali jedno opatření, že je všechny zabalili do celty, zakopali je na té louce a doufali, že brzy nějaké úřady naše a německý se o to postarají. A někdy v červenci nebo v srpnu to [úřady] umožnily, že pro ně někdo přijel.“
We're returning after three days from Germany and we were already some thirty kilometres past the border and the lady behind me says: 'Tell the chauffeur to stop.' The chauffeur stopped, we jumped out, I jumped across the ditch, so did about six more women, the men went to the other side. Now, there was such a spot and there were those tanks covered with tarps. I say: 'Back, go back, there's some army manoeuvres going on!' Imagine, nobody on the bus had any idea, it was on the 20th August, that on the 21th, there would be any invasion. So the men got on the bus and we went to the other side where the men were. Nobody had a clue... and we really wondered back then. They were already in a starting position then... Germans."
Grandma lucked out that they picked him and put him onto a cart in which some straw was thrown, and he said: 'They drove us for two weeks before we got to a train station.' He had two shot wounds in his legs and shattered bone. No help, no injection, no medical service, no bandage or something like that. When they got to the train station, they loaded them onto cargo wagons on some straw. But there was a doctor who checked on them and either injected them with some meds or a nurse bandaged them. But it took two more weeks before they got to the Plzeň hospital."
"And grandpa talked like a book. And, there were three or four neighbours and he told the stories from the trenches. How twelve soldiers stood holding themselves around the shoulders and four soldiers slept inside, they kept them warm. Knee deep in mud and it wsa cold. After an hour or two, they changed places and stood around in a circle. And again, four or five of them slept in the trench."
A cartload of hay. Two hundred kilos of wheat, oats or barley. Pig, two hundred kilos – whole live pig. If it was not two hundred kilos, we had to cover the difference in eggs or milk. The mayor had a table and said, so many eggs more. I know that the quota was a thousand of eggs for hectare, we had four and half hectares so it was four and half thousands eggs. And from our own pig, we had to supply the skin and fifteen kilos of lard. Pork and beef, two hundred kilos each, eggs, milk. Every day, we took a bucket to the collecting spot. It was the Hlinsko milk processing plant who organised the pick-up, every day at half past seven, and the lady who gathered milk from the whole village had to get it ready, sieved, in 25-litre jugs. Once a week, she would sample it because some folks diluted it with water. People got paid based on fat content but much less for what they would buy it in the shop. That was the production quota.
Vlastimila Málková, née Marková was born on the 17th of March of 1940 in Suchá at the foot of Železné Hory [Iron Mountains]. Both her parents had to walk to work to the Eckhardt factory in Chotěboř and Vlastimila was thus mostly cared for by her grandmother. Her grandfather František Kruml had fought in WWI where he sustained a gunshot wound during the fights and he liked to tell granddaughter stories about his wartime life. The witness tells about the end of WWII in her birthplace and about fear of the OUN-B (*) who kept hiding in forests around Spálava until the spring of 1947. In the 1950’s, the founding of Unified Agricultural Cooperative was planned. The Marek family were smallholders and they were forced to join the co-op by exchanging their field for others and by raising their production quota. Witness‘ husband Zdeněk Málek worked as a supply clerk in the Chotěboř engineering works. After he refused to join the Communist Party and disapproved of the invasion of the armies of the Warsaw Pact, he was fired and had problems finding another job. As a result, both their sons had problems getting the credentials to be admitted to high school.
Nowadays, the witness is devoting her time to photography. At the time of the recording, she lived in Chotěboř.
(*) Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists – Bandera faction
Vlastimila's mother Marie and the Kruml grandparents. "Even when grandpa got new trousers, grandma would sew on a patch on the right trousers because he would always cut and peel willow twigs on his right knee."
Vlastimila's mother Marie and the Kruml grandparents. "Even when grandpa got new trousers, grandma would sew on a patch on the right trousers because he would always cut and peel willow twigs on his right knee."
Mrs. Málková's grandfather is one of the soldiers in the centre. Photograph from a theatre performance at the Bradlo chateau near Trhová Kamenice, in the Chrudim region.
Mrs. Málková's grandfather is one of the soldiers in the centre. Photograph from a theatre performance at the Bradlo chateau near Trhová Kamenice, in the Chrudim region.
