Emilie Novoměstská

* 1926

  • “My father's brother did his military service in Prague under Beneš for an extended time. When Beneš was to fly to England, he was supposed to follow him there. But my aunt was pregnant with their baby and she did not want to go and so he stayed at home, but he maintained contacts with England. He would look conspicuous in Prague and so he moved to Kyjov, he had a job there, he worked as a librarian, and he was to organize the group of resistance fighters here. He organized doctors from the hospital and the other officers, and the priest from Ždánice, he was from Nechvalín, and Lovčice and Nechvalín were almost like one village and he befriended him in Nechvalín and he offered to him that if he ever needed it, he was ready to help and provide some hiding place. So he was hiding the paratroopers in his rectory. He had a group of people, and when the airplanes were flying over there and paratroopers were being deployed from them, they were dropping down weapons for them, and so on, and whatever was needed, and it was at night and they had to put it away before morning, because the authorities were searching for it. He was hiding about four people in the rectory and the food rationing system was in place and they had no food for them, so we, our family and people from Nechvalín, we were bringing some food for them there. They needed milk, for instance. I was a young girl and my parents agreed that I would be the one going to the rectory, because it would not be conspicuous. I was fifteen or sixteen and in the evenings or during the day I would go with a bag to the rectory in Ždánice. There were houses at the outskirts of Ždánice and a teacher had his house there. He was here already for many years, he was a principal in the school over there and he used to take a walk around his house in the evenings. He knew me, right, and one day he told me: ‘Girl, you come here quite often, don’t you? Where do you go?’ I replied: ‘To see a girl friend.’ And he just wagged his finger at me: ‘Surely a girl? Not a boyfriend perhaps?’ He noticed me and some other person might notice me too, and so I was afraid to go there and I would take a detour through the town and take another street, another path...” – “For how long did it last when you were going there with the milk?” – “For two months and then they already took over the rectory, they already found them there. A traitor got in there among them and he betrayed them. They shot all of them.” – “Even your father's brother?” – “Yes, they shot him, too, his wife died in Auschwitz and a three-year-old girl remained alive.”

  • “We were liberated by Romanians, which was good, they were intelligent people. People said various things about the Russians, right. They were passing through the village early on Sunday morning, the vehicles full of people were passing through the village. People were giving them plum brandy and straw baskets with cakes, because we had baked the cakes in cases we would not be able to cook afterwards. People were giving them the plum brandy, but they were after the cakes. All of them stopped.” – “So there was not even any fighting here?” – “No no, they only passed through here. The Germans, when they were to leave, they were... They were here, for instance, and they were going to take one of our wagons. And one of the Germans came to my dad and he talked with him and he wanted to take one of the wagons and use it to go away. So dad went with him… German soldiers were accommodated here in the schoolhouse and they had nothing to eat. They did not have their field kitchens and their supplies here. They did not care about them. They saw that they were among enemies and they were going from house to house and asking for food. The war front was advancing, they were actually already retreating from the front. They had no supplies, no kitchen, they did not have anything, they had been simply abandoned here. There were about twenty of them. And just imagine, they knocked on our door. They had shot our uncle, and all that, and so we were scared, but instead they just came to ask for bread... my mom gave them bread. She felt sorry for them.”

  • “Our parents, my dad, did not want to join the cooperative. People resisted it fiercely at first, there was nearly a revolution when they arrived to campaign to make people join the cooperative. People with hoes, pitchforks, and rakes were all here in front of the office, but they defeated them. The way they did it was that at first they lured the people, young people, into the factory, and when the people got used to factory work, they said to the old people: ‘We will fire him from his job if you do not join the cooperative.’ Many people therefore signed it because they were afraid that the young people would get kicked from their jobs. And our daddy, they accused him that he was making obstructions to it… and many people went with him, that’s true. If he had joined the cooperative, the whole village would have joined with him. He was stubborn, and we waited until they destroyed us. Well, they took everything from us. They came here, and they led away all the cattle and they gathered everything, the machinery we had… the chairman from the village administration office was very diligent. He ordered them to take everything, including spades and hoes, and load it onto the wagon.”

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    Lovčice, 17.09.2018

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    duration: 01:56:57
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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If people loved each other, life would be better

Emilie - profile photo (undated)
Emilie - profile photo (undated)
photo: archiv pamětnice

Emilie Novoměstská was born on January 30, 1926 into a middle class farmer’s family of Mr. and Mrs. Müller in Lovčice in the Kyjov region. After completing the elementary and higher elementary school she started working on her parents’ farm as the only one of their children. In 1942 she became involved in the resistance activity when she was carrying milk to the rectory in Ždánice which served as a hiding place for paratroopers. Her father’s brother Josef Müller was shot to death in the same year. The Nazis confiscated the family’s property. Emilie became active in the life of the village after the end of the Second World War: she worked on the farm and during winter she attended the school of economics in Kyjov. In 1949 she married Bernard Novoměstský and they raised two children. Around 1958 she lost the farm, which was confiscated by communists, and she began working on a state-owned farm. Her husband unexpectedly died in 1964 and she remained alone. Now she lives in Lovčice, surrounded by her grandchildren and great-grandchildren.