“It was the harvest time and the policeman who was working with us then told my father-in-law that something aimed against us was underway. My father-in-law didn’t take it seriously though. I could blame him, but I don’t. It was his conviction and I respect that. He thought that the regime would be over by Christmas. It wasn’t. The policeman had warned him. We noticed that the people from the Municipal State Committee began acting in a strange way. We tried to persuade my father-in-law. My husband even reproached him a little for having brought the garden-cutter to our house. It came very handy afterward, because we came to this house after it had happened. It was on December 3, while I was teaching at school. When I came home, two Black Marys were standing in our yard. Our parents-in-law lived downstairs, and when I wen into our flat upstairs, I couldn’t recognize it. Everything was scattered all over the place, but they had not stolen anything. They were looking for some evidence. By coincidence the firearms were not in our house. Believe it or not, but two months before it happened, my husband had told Slávek (Stanilav Svozil) to take them away, because something was going to happen…”
"They stole our car. My husband asked what´s happening. He came to the yard and asked where the car was and I told him it was gone. We were lucky again. It was stolen by Soviet soldiers. They had made bunkers there in Náměšt, destroyed nature. Terrible, but that's another chapter. They were drunk and kicked down the gate and stole the car. Unfortunately, the garage was not locked. We only heard them drive away. Now, imagine that they drove towards Loučany. Then, they took it straight and got to the school and seeing that they were at the end, they turned around and hit the door again with the car and overturned the school gate. Then people laughed. 'Jarmila, they were looking for you.' Because I used to live in that school. They caught them.'
“When they moved us out, they allowed us to take some furniture, but believe it or not, only what they let us take. 'You can take this chair here, you can take this, you can't take this.' They loaded the rest of our possessions onto one wagon. Everything else stayed there and we moved to our parents in Náměšt na Hané. They were not enthusiastic because we lived with them for a year in the same household. I had two small children. I have a memory of that too. I was the last to leave. Only my husband and the collapsed mother-in-law fit in the car. The father-in-law was already arrested. They first took him to Šternberk and later transferred him to Brno. I was the last to leave the house. I'll never forget it. Jaruška was four years old. It was December, terrible weather. I had two-year-old Jiřík in my arms and I also had a cat in the box. And when we left the village, there was a lady from the opposite house waiting for me, who was watching everything that was happening there. And believe me or not, I didn't even have money for a train ticket. When they moved us, they stole everything they could. We also had pictures of noble ancestors. Everything had to stay there. What they allowed us to take was the bare minimum. They even took our money. I didn't have to catch the train."
"I didn't have money for the train ticket. I was thinking to get on the train without a ticket, and when they would catch me and let me off the train, that I would wait for the next train and then get to Náměšť. It was not necessary, because a lady was waiting for me pass the village and she said: 'Mrs. Nohavičková, I know you have no money.' And she gave me two thousand crowns. That was terrible money back then and I could buy a ticket. At that time, I was teaching in Uničov. The Nohavička family was not very supportive of this, but I did not want to leave the teaching profession. And today I know that it was a good thing, because I then supported my whole family from my salary. I was teaching in Uničov when they did the purge here. The next day I went to school. I was teaching and suddenly the door opened and the principal said: 'Take your things and get out of the school!' I knew why, but the children didn't. I took my things and walked to the door and those 30 pairs of eyes watched me as I walked to the door. They didn't know why, I did. I reached the door and looked around again. That's when the principal grabbed my shoulder and shouted at me: 'Get out of school!'"
“My husband left with a small truck. A driver was sitting there, with grandmother, who was on the verge of collapse, and my husband, he was there to unload it afterward. I was walking with the children in that terrible weather. Little Jiří was two years old. I carried him under my coat. Four-year-old Jaruška carried her little suitcase and her doll. She walked all the way, three kilometres to the railway station in Uničov. She kept walking. I held her hand, and I used my other arm to hold little Jiří. I did not have any money at all. An old lady was waiting for me behind the village of Brníčko and she gave me two thousand Crowns. She said,´Mrs. Nohavičková, I know that you have no money. You don’t need to pay this back to me.´ I took the money. I had been thinking that I would just sit on the train, and when the conductor came and found out that I had no ticket, he would make me get off at the following station, in Náměšť. So I would have to get off and wait for another train. But now, since this woman gave me the money, I was able to buy the ticket. I thought I would arrive some time in the evening. Then on December 31, I went to the school for my last salary. The principal who had kicked me out of the school didn’t want to give me my pay. He said: ´But you’re not teaching here anymore!´ I told him: ´I have my salary here.´ - ´Well, you do.´ - ´And you will pay it to me. I’m not leaving without it.´ He was making it complicated for me. He eventually gave me the money. I immediately paid two thousand Crowns to that lady, even though we didn’t have anything.”
“When my father-in-law was taken away, I missed one day of school. I was in Šternberk. I went to the court in Olomouc that day, but I went to school the day after. Just one day, that was nothing unusual. But the next day I was teaching in my classroom and all of a sudden the door opened and there was the principal and he remained standing in the door and told me: ´Pack your stuff and get out of the school right away!´ I knew why, but the children didn’t. I took my things and went. And the children – I can still see their faces, their eyes. There was the unspoken question: Why?! I stopped in the door, but the principal grabbed my arm and pulled me out and closed the door. I went to the staffroom, where I had my clothes, and a colleague of mine came to me. I was crying so much and she told me: ´Jarka, don’t cry! Don’t show it to them. They are idiots. Please, be brave!´ I had to leave and then I stayed at home till the fifteenth.”
“I graduated in Kroměříž in 1942. I was studying at Koménium, which was an institute for teachers. But in 1941 they arrested our principal. His son then came in February, informing us that he was dead. They had received a letter saying that he had died in a prison in Brno. He had been probably been executed. Our institute was closed down and our devoted teachers and professors traveled all over the Protectorate, trying at least to find placement for us in other schools. Eventually, the institute in Kroměříž agreed to take all of us. There were two classes, the boys’ class and the girls’ class. Local families invited us to live with them there because we had no place to stay in Kroměříž. They offered us housing out of their patriotic duty. I was there together with my friend, who has accompanied me throughout all of my life, and we also graduated there together. Our graduation took place three days after Heydrich’s assassination. The situation was very tense. The teachers were begging us: ´For God’s sake! Don’t come all here! Don’t go visit each other!´ At that time, even three people standing together on the street were at risk. As you can imagine, we were not responsible, and we did all this anyways. We went on a trip to the Lysá Mountain. I wonder that nothing happened to us.”
“He always used to say that politics was a dirty affair, even back then. But he was a strong patriot. For instance, he served as a mayor during the occupation era, and he was desperate because of that. But he was the only one in Loučany who was able to speak German. They simply appointed him mayor, and Daddy was very unhappy, because he knew that these people would then condemn him one day. And they did. But these people didn’t even know what Dad had done for them. For the whole village, for every person there. They didn’t know that.”
“The Nohavička family owned a family house in Loučany, with a shop downstairs. My father-in-law had returned via America as a legionnaire – he also fought in the battle of Bakhmach. It was a very tragic story. His father had four beautiful sons. The eldest died at home from war injuries. The other did not return at all – missing in action. The third son was my father-in-law Jiří. And the last one was Mořic, who was some twelve years younger than my father-in-law. When Jiří (father-in-law) didn’t return from the war, their father thought that Mořic was missing as well. He couldn’t bear it. He took his own life. Mořic and my father-in-law were thus the only ones who remained of that family. And we keep saying that this was well, because Mořic then died in Breslau, when he was executed during WWII. My father-in-law was thus the only one still living. And later, when he was discussed by the Municipal State Committee, they said of him: "When we do away with J. Nohavička, we will turn his farm into a unified agricultural cooperative.´ And that was when our ordeal started.”
Jarmila Nohavičková, née Chytilová, was born in 1923 in Ústín, near Olomouc. Her parents were both teachers, which was probably why she also chose the teaching profession. During the war she studied at the Koménium Institute in Olomouc, but the Nazis closed the school in February 1942. She eventually passed her graduation exams in Kroměříž in the tense atmosphere of terror following the assassination of R. Heydrich. In 1946, already working as a teacher, she married Jiří Nohavička, who was from an old farmering family, originally of noble descent. Her husband’s father, Jiří Nohavička Sr., had been a legionnaire in WWI. In 1945 the family obtained a farm in Brníčko, which had been left in a desolate state after Russian soldiers had been quartered there. The newlyweds lived and worked on this farm as well. In 1951, under the Kulak Action, Jiří Nohavička Sr. was arrested and sentenced unconditionally to six months of imprisonment. Jarmila was dismissed from school and the whole family had to move out of the district. With the exception of some furniture, which she had received as a dowry, they had to leave all their property on the farm. Following their displacement, Jarmila and her husband lived in Loučany with her parents. Jarmila Nohavičková was then teaching “illegally” for several years in Drahanovice, until later when she recieved official employment in a school in Náměšť na Hané. Her husband Jiří had to go to work in a factory, which for him, a farmer by nature, was very difficult to bear. The work in a lathe workshop damaged his lungs and he eventually would spend the last years of his life attached to a breathing apparatus. Her father-in-law Jiří Nohavička returned from prison after half a year, but the StB continued his surveillance for more several years. Furthermore, in 1961 communists dispossessed his native house in Loučany, which was turned into a Jednota grocery shop. After 1990, during the restitutions, the family was returned their estate in Brníčko. In 2009-2010 a trial was held for the former chairman of the Municipal State Committee, Ladislav Nakládal, who probably shared responsibility for the family’s persecution. In April 2010, Ladislav Nakládal, the first communist official involved in the forced collectivization in the 1950s who has ever been brought to trial, was sentenced by the District Court in Olomouc to a suspended sentence of two-year imprisonment. She died on 28 May, 2022.
Employees of the witness´s father-in-law in Boťany in southeastern Slovakia, where legionaries from WWI settled (Jiří Nohavička with his sons Jiří and František on the right) - 1930s
Employees of the witness´s father-in-law in Boťany in southeastern Slovakia, where legionaries from WWI settled (Jiří Nohavička with his sons Jiří and František on the right) - 1930s
The Nohavička family shortly before their displacement from Brníčko in summer 1951 (Jarmila Nohavičková, children Jiří and Jarmila, and Jiří Nohavička)
The Nohavička family shortly before their displacement from Brníčko in summer 1951 (Jarmila Nohavičková, children Jiří and Jarmila, and Jiří Nohavička)
