Vlasta Stádníková

* 1933

  • "There was the parcel bomb affair. Have you ever heard about it? At that time, three ministers, [Jan] Masaryk, Dr. [Prokop] Drtina and the third... I don't remember now... [Petr Zenkl] got parcel bombs. Just packages with explosives. Simply put, the Bolsheviks wanted to eliminate them like that, and they sent them the packages. It was found that there were explosives inside just in time, I guess before they actually received the parcels, which were meant to kill them. That was called the parcel bomb affair."

  • "I remember that a bit. That was very... very sad. Looking out the window in our street, I could see a hay cart loaded with straw... I mean, hay. There were dead people on top of the hay. It wasn't the horses pulling the wagon, it was the Germans. I don't know who was in the front, but in the back they were women pushing it, and they had been stripped from the waist up, which was horrible."

  • "I know that they used to go to the countryside for provisions. Looking back, I don't understand why my parents would send me, a nine-year-old girl, by train to Stratov, one statin past Lysá nad Labem, to get some food. It was because they didn't check the children at the stations. They used to stop people getting off the train and check their bags. When they sent me, they said, 'Nobody will check you.' So I went there and brought something. I always had a can of milk, some bread and maybe a lump of butter. I remember once I happened to spill the milk somehow. On the tram, when I was about to get off the 18, I somehow dropped the milk. Nobody punished me. How they cleaned it up afterwards, I don't know. The tram went on and the milk was half gone."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 15.06.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:12:41
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

People who used to greet our father crossed the street after 1948

Vlasta Stádníková during the filming
Vlasta Stádníková during the filming
photo: Post Bellum filming

Vlasta Stádníková was born in Prague on 24 February 1933 to the family of ministerial councillor Bohumil Kofroň. She grew up in Terronská Street in Dejvice where her family lived in a house inhabited mostly by the employees of the Ministries of the Interior and Justice. At the end of World War II, she witnessed the departure of the German army nad the abuse of German civilians. She began studying at the St. Voršila Girls’ Grammar School in Prague in 1945. In 1947, the Ministry of Justice where her father worked was hit by the ‘parcel affair’: three non-Communist ministers, including Minister of Justice Prokop Drtina, received parcel bombs. The assassination attempt was likely plotted by the communists. Bohumil Kofroň was charged with investigating the incident. He was dismissed from the Ministry immediately after the Communists came to power on 25 February 1948. Vlasta Stádníková graduated from high school but was not admitted to medical school and found a job at the Institute of Physical Medicine. In 1954 she met her future husband, sculptor Karel Stádník. A graduate of Otakar Španiel’s studio at the Academy of Fine Arts, he did not want to work on pro-regime sculpture commissions, so he worked as a restorer in the 1950s. (The recording is incomplete due to the witness’s indisposition.)