Thank you for saving me
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Vladimír Polívka was born on 7 April 1927 in Ledochovka in Volhynia (today Novoukraiinka in Ukraine), Poland. His family were Volhynian Czechs. In Volhynia he experienced Soviet and German occupation. His parents Vladimír and Olga were hiding a Jew, Yehoshua Steinschnedt, in a hiding place in their barn for two years. They saved his life. In April 1944 Vladimír’s father had to enlist in the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps in the Soviet Union fighting alongside Red Army. He suffered a gunshot to his arm. Few months later Vladimír Polívka joined the army as well. But shortly after he became ill with severe pneumonia and spent several months in a hospital. He re-joined the battlefields in West Slovakia, near Liptovský Mikuláš. When the war ended he was in Pivín near Prostějov. After demobilization he and his father settled on a farm with 12 hectares of fields in Myslechovice (today part of Litovel), to where his mother and sister Olga remigrated to join them. At the beginning of 1950s Vladimír Polívka got married and moved with his wife to Dlouhá Loučka where their children Marie and Miroslav were born in 1951 and 1953. At that time, he wanted to start to work in machine works in Uničov but he had to work in agriculture. He worked ad a cattle feeder in local agricultural cooperative until he retired.
