Libuše Šrámková

* 1934

  • "I also experienced it more acutely because I was locked up and I always - I have to say, when the war was over it was like the Wild West. Because the Russians would come in drunk; there was a brewery nearby and they'd get drunk, and then people would get locked up and the Russians would bang on the doors and yell. It wasn't nice, even though they liberated us. I also remember living with aunt in Židenice and there was a factory being built for the Germans up the hill. They didn't like the sand crumbling down there, so they pulled away, they went away. The people who didn't have a cellar would stay there overnight. We were there for fourteen days, closed, only I always went out with my aunt, she was nice to me. We went to watch them bomb Brno. My mother was very scared. And I know that when we were lying down and sleeping, a Russian came by wearing this cloak and a machine gun, and he asked: 'Not German, not German?' When they got out in the morning, everybody was packing up they were afraid of the Russians, because it was wild."

  • "That's where we moved when the war was over. They ordered a bus and we were about to go somewhere. I don't know if it was in the Jihlava direction - a man who lived there too once told me that we were supposed to go to Jihlava and beyond. At five minutes to twelve, my mother got me off the bus - she was there with this auntie, her sister. They were still standing there, convincing them and saying that I was her daughter and so on. No papers, nothing. This Mr Čermák got all the paperwork sorted out for me because my mother was afraid I would be deported since I spoke German. Czech was so difficult for me, I remember. I was learning, and then I went to school in Cacovická, and the teacher, who really liked me, was so dedicated to me. He taught me the di- ti-, I was never good at that."

  • "They treated me well, making was no difference between Germans and others. But there were only German nurses, nursemaids, so I didn't speak Czech at all. I was... well, just German. I went to the school at Na Hlinkách, we always walked there, as they show it, in a row, and we sang in German too. And then we walked back by ourselves."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Brno, 29.06.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 34:55
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Brno, 14.07.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 15:16
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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My mother was afraid I was going to be deported

The witness aged three before the beginning of the Nazi occupation
The witness aged three before the beginning of the Nazi occupation
photo: Witness's archive

Libuše Šrámková was born in Brno on 5 July 1934. Until the age of seven, she lived with her single mother Josefa Šrámková, but then she was placed in a children’s shelter. It was heavily Germanised, the governesses were only German, the children did not come into contact with the outside world at all, they went to school in formation and sang German marches. Little Libuše gradually forgot her native language and culture. It was only at the last moment when a bus of fleeing Germans was leaving the orphanage that her mother unexpectedly picked her up. The witness had no documents with her and a doll was all she had. In the post-war days, her mother hid her because she was afraid she would be deported. In the meantime, the witness gradually relearned Czech but Czech schoolchildren shunned her. When she finished primary school, she became a knitter, got married and worked in Třebíč, Jihlava and then again in Brno. She was also a member of a successful handball team. She joined the communist youth organisation, ČSM in the 1950s. She lived in Brno in 2023.