They took our horse, it neighed, and Dad cried like a little kid
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Milada Pavelková was born on 20 September 1943 and lived with her parents in Žampach near Letohrad until she was three years old. Her father Václav Kalousek (1901-1993) was a farmer and her mother Anna Kalousková (1906-1989) helped him and raised their three children, Milada, Bohuslav (1925-2003) and Jaroslav (1931-2013). The family moved to Dolní Orlice near Červená Voda into a house vacated by deported Germans. The parents started farming on a larger scale and gradually became more successful. In the 1950s, however, they were labeled kulaks, the communists took away all their equipment and livestock, and they had to make pointless deliveries. They worked from dawn to dusk yet had nearly nothing to eat themselves. They faced unbearable pressure until they joined a farming cooperative in 1955. Milada wanted to be a saleswoman, but as the daughter of a kulak she was not allowed to, the authorities decided. And so in 1957, at the age of 14, she joined the Orban textiles factory in Červená Voda. Thi is where she met Antonín Pavelka (1935-2019) who she married in 1959, and they settled in Červená Voda - Šanov. Three sons were born to them in 1959, 1960 and 1969. The witness has unpleasant memories of the occupation on 21 August 1968 as the barracks in Červena Voda were occupied by the Soviet Army very soon. Soviet convoys of heavy armoured vehicles frequently drove past their house day and night to the training grounds. They even damaged the local citizens’ property several times. One day, they knocked down a cross in front of the church, and its fragments are still buried in another place. In 1989, the witness experienced great joy at the fall of the totalitarian regime, but this was marred for a long time by the tragic death of her son and his entire family. She worked at Orban for forty years and retired in 1997. In 2023, she lived in Červená Voda - Šanov.
