“I had to start all over again from the first year. I recall they set up a small wooden stage in front of the school to mark Masaryk’s birthday. They chose me to sing a song along with a mate. She couldn’t finish the song, though, and burst into tears. We were singing a song on Masaryk’s birthday: ‘Our father, your hair is grey.’ I can see it like it was today. First class, right after the war. She cried because her daddy never made it back from the war. I had to finish the song alone. I couldn’t see people in the audience – there was a handrail around us – so they put me on a cucumber crate.”
“We weren’t in school then. They said there was no point hiding in the cellar. We were sitting in the corridor because everybody thought: ‘Whether they hit Dobřany or this place, we’ll be gone anyway.’ We put chairs in the corridor; it was long. All the neighbours would hide in the cellar. Every time there was an air raid, all the neighbours hid in the cellar nearest to them at the time. We all just sat in the corridor then, though. We said: ‘We’ll see.’ We were also told to open windows and doors because of the shockwave. We never did… And then it hit. The shockwave blew away the doors and windows. It wasn’t just Dobřany that was hit – the bombs landed in the field past Dubovec, towards the Chotěšov side. I remember the bomb craters. They [craters] stayed there for a long time. Well, they got something wrong and dropped the bombs on the [mental] asylum in Dobřany, and it was horrific. Severed legs and arms scattered about… It was horrible. We went there to have a look.”
“When they [US Army] came, we went to the monastery hill to look and wait [for them]. The infantry was coming from Stod, and as they were marching past the school, someone fired a round from the building. After that, they [the Americans] started firing at the school building. A guard house that stood by the school just disappeared; we saw it burning. Even the goats grazing in the garden were fried. We ran home. We saw them turning down on the road to the village, so we ran home and yelled: ‘They’re coming!’ Grandma said: ‘Now, let’s take a look to see how many there are.’ I said: ‘You can’t count them, grandma.’ We sat down on a stair in front of the door like we used to every evening. She held me in her lap and we watched the infantry coming.”
“By then, we were living with the Baxa family down on their farmstead. I was sitting on the kitchen window with a direct view of the monastery. I was sitting and suddenly I started yelling. They [parents] said: ‘What’s the matter?’ I said: ‘Look! There’s a fire, and we’ll burn too!’ Thick black smoke was coming from there; it was burning rapidly. Three-metre flames sprang into the air, pointing northwards, to the monastery’s north part. A tinsmith named Mayer allegedly set it on fire.”
Karolina Remiášová, née Krausová, was born into a German Roman Catholic musician’s family in Chotěšov on 20 December 1938. The family lived directly in the Chotěšov monastery from 1939 to 1942. When the Nazi army arrived, the family relocated to a cottage near the monastery. Karolina Remiášová remembers the Allies’ air raid in the night of 16 and 17 April 1943 that hit the nearby community of Dobřany instead of the Škoda factory. Living close to the Chotěšov monastery, she witnessed its dramatic history first-hand. On 6 May 1945, she and others welcomed American soldiers in Chotěšov. Her father taught music and played the violin, and one brother played the accordion and the other the cello. Karolina completed the Bedřich Smetana Elementary Art School in Lobzy and played the guitar. They formed a family band and performed in and around Chotěšov. She first went to a German school and then to a Czech one. She got her first employment at just 14 years old. She worked at a brick plant and then at a clothing service firm in Plzeň until her wedding. She got married in 1959 and raised three daughters. Then she joined the Jitona furniture plant in Stod and worked there until age 36 when she was granted disability pension. She was not interested in politics too much but embraced the Velvet Revolution. She was still living in Chotěšov at the time of recording in 2022.
Karolina Remiášová with granddaughter Monika Viktorie Eretová and documentary filmmaker Jarmila Vandová, browsing family photographs and reminiscing in the summer of 2022
Karolina Remiášová with granddaughter Monika Viktorie Eretová and documentary filmmaker Jarmila Vandová, browsing family photographs and reminiscing in the summer of 2022
Karolina Remiášová with granddaughter Monika Viktorie Eretová and great-granddaughter Viktorie in the Chotěšov monastery during the official presentation of the Stories of our Neighbours project in the summer of 2022
Karolina Remiášová with granddaughter Monika Viktorie Eretová and great-granddaughter Viktorie in the Chotěšov monastery during the official presentation of the Stories of our Neighbours project in the summer of 2022
Karolina Remiášová receiving flowers in the Chotěšov monastery on the occasion of the official presentation of the Stories of our Neighbours project in the summer of 2022
Karolina Remiášová receiving flowers in the Chotěšov monastery on the occasion of the official presentation of the Stories of our Neighbours project in the summer of 2022
Karolina Remiášová with great-granddaughter Viktorie in front of the Chotěšov monastery on the occasion of the official presentation of the Stories of our Neighbours project in the summer of 2022
Karolina Remiášová with great-granddaughter Viktorie in front of the Chotěšov monastery on the occasion of the official presentation of the Stories of our Neighbours project in the summer of 2022
