Ludmila Poláchová

* 1930

  • "Well, the State Farm took that away from us, and grandpa didn't go to the barn for a month when they took the horses away. He sat and cried like a little boy. They were the prettiest horses in the village, he really looked after them. The worst farmer got the horses. He said, 'If anybody got them, but they did this on purpose', he didn't even want to be the mayor after that."

  • "When my parents were at the wedding, the Russians were walking along the creek. It was about fifty meters from our house. They didn't go up because they could see the trees. My mother said that they started shooting at the ceiling at the wedding. She said the people in the doorway didn't know how they were rushing themselves out, it was terrible."

  • "Then some boys escaped from Provázek's stables and stayed in a village - in Valašská Bystřica - with a farmer. He had a Russian commando in his attic, or whatever it was. They had a Russian radio, just everything that reported. Someone gave it away, they [the Germans] went there, they caught these four or five boys alive, tied a rope around their necks, and the farmer had to drag them with horses to the church to the morgue. One was a little older now, we were kind of something...So my classmate Maruska and I [said] we would go there during the break. We went, the teacher didn't want to let us go, but Maruska told him that she had a toothache, she had to go to the dentist and that I was going with her so she wouldn't be sad. We went to the morgue - imagine, they left it open, unlocked - we went in, they were lying on a pile, they had [their throats] cut, young boys..."

  • Full recordings
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    Šternberk, 28.03.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 02:26:00
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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We lived how we knew, we knew nothing else

Ludmila Poláchová with her husband Lubomir, 1984
Ludmila Poláchová with her husband Lubomir, 1984
photo: Archive of the witness

Ludmila Poláchová, nee. Martinátová, born on 3 April 1930 in Valašská Bystřice. She was born into a farming family, her parents had a farm in a secluded area and took care of several hectares of fields and forests. Her father Josef Martinát, a social democrat, joined the resistance during the war. He cooperated with the partisan group For Freedom - For the Fatherland and the Jan Žižka Partisan Brigade. The partisans often visited the family. For most of the war, the Martinát family also hid a college student from Vsetín from forced labour. In 1946 the family left for Nové Valternice as part of the resettlement of the border area. Josef Martinát served as mayor there from 1946 to 1948. Ludmila trained as a grocer in Bruntál in 1946-1948 and then worked as a grocer in Nové Valterřice and Moravský Beroun. After 1948, the family lost its farm as part of collectivisation and the property went to the State Farm. Ludmila married Lubomír Polách in 1953 and they raised four children together. In 1954 they moved to Šternberk, where they lived through the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops and the years of normalisation. They worked in Chronotechna, her husband was then employed on the railway, Ludmila Poláchová in the school canteen as a cook. Because they were not in the Communist Party, the eldest son had trouble getting into university. In 1982 they moved to Olomouc. Ludmila Poláchová worked in the canteen of the Children’s Home in Hejčín as a chef. She retired in 1984, the same year her husband died. Ludmila Poláchová eventually returned to Šternberk to be closer to her children. Since 2019, she has been living in the Home for the Elderly in Šternberk, Na Valech, where the filming of the interview took place in 2024.