Oldřiška Šicová

* 1934

  • “When they took over our country in September, when the Germans came, the first thing they did was that they picked up nearly the entire list of candidates who ran for the last election into the village office in Souš in 1938… Daddy thus could have already been in prison at that time. He was (I don’t remember it myself, but I remember that mom said that it took a long time) there for six weeks and then they released all of them. The pretext for their arrest was that they had set flags with swastikas on fire… They used this pretext that these people (because they were members of the communist party who ran as candidates for the village office back in 1938), that they had set the flags on fire and they claimed that they had done it. I only remember dad’s return. We, children were playing in the yard, and there was a large gate, and suddenly, in between the gate…my daddy. I ran to him over the whole yard. He brought me a chocolate.”

  • “One might say that it is an exaggeration, that lives were at stake. But at that time, it was really so, lives were at stake. Even for trifles. If Germans had seen it that way, then… I don’t mean all Germans. No. They were not all the same. Dad had a colleague at work, for example. He was a German, too, and dad always used to say: ‘If every German was like this man, everything would be well.’ And he had more people like that. My God, for we lived there, all of us together.”

  • “One day, just in front of their house, I was walking to school and it was so foggy that one could not even see one step ahead. All of a sudden a piece of a brick flew from somewhere and it injured my head. Two Germans were walking in front of me and it was probably they who did it, because it flew directly against me, and not from above.”

  • Full recordings
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    v Mostě, 14.04.2016

    (audio)
    duration: 01:18:42
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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I am not saying that all Germans. They were not all the same. We lived there, my God, all of us together

Oldřiška Šicová "historical photo"
Oldřiška Šicová "historical photo"
photo: PNS

Oldřiška Šicová, née Králová, was born in 1934. She spent her childhood in the village Souš near Most with her parents Albína and Josef and her older sister Jiřina. Her father was a communist party candidate for the local village office in 1938. At the end of September 1938 he was arrested for the first time under a pretext of having set flags on fire. The second time he got arrested was on August 22, 1944 and he was subsequently transported to the concentration camp Sachsenhausen-Neuengamme. On February 2, 1945 Oldřiška’s mother received a standardized post card with information that Josef Král had died. When the Second World War was over, Oldřiška studied a higher elementary school and then a technical school. She now lives with her children and grandchildren in Most.