“We were deported on 28th of September.” Interviewer: “What was the deportation like?” – “There is an entire history of the occasion. On the day when they planned to deport us, sister superior was summoned to Prague. In the morning she travelled to Prague, and at around four or five in the afternoon, fifteen people came and requested keys to the superior’s office. I didn’t know. I was the youngest one. The sisters said that they would not give them the keys because it was not just her office, but her private apartment as well, and nobody had the right to enter her apartment when she wasn't home. They persisted. They waited till half past ten when she returned from Prague. And they wanted to negotiate with her, her signatures and everything possible. She told them: ´No official matters are discussed at night. I am tired after the journey and I will not do anything with you.´ Fourteen people were watching us for these three days. They were guarding us. People saw them. We didn’t even know that there were so many people watching us, but sister superior naturally didn’t go to sleep. She took the two sisters who were not working with her. By then, only a few people were giving us money for the children. There were fifty or sixty orphans there. Some were paying, some were not. Charitable gifts, collections were being made, asking people to donate money. This money was then used to sustain them. We didn’t have money. There was nothing at all. If we had a few Crowns, sister superior would give them to the poorest people who really needed them. She gave them whatever money we had. They came in the morning. They were surprised that we had neither debts nor money. All this was recorded. This happened on Monday, and they gave us one day to pack, and we were to leave on Wednesday.”
“The church stands some hundred or hundred and fifty metres from the market square. The square was full of people. They were praying with rosary beads and singing all night till the morning. We were to leave at six in the morning. At five we had the last holy mass in the chapel. The priest then carried the Holiest to the church and the chapel thus remained empty. Everything was empty. There was so much crying, you cannot imagine. We were leaving, and all these people were crying. There were men, tough hardened men, and they had been praying throughout the whole night, singing and praying.”
“We stayed together. We had three rooms. There were Carmelite sisters next to us, ten of them. On the other side there were the Vincent sisters, we called them blue sisters. That was another subgroup of Vincent sisters. It was very hard for them. They trusted them and they really didn’t take anything with them, only food for two days. They had many old sisters there with them, and these poor sisters had to sleep on the ground. Later they brought beds for them from Frýdlant, from a children’s home. They gave them children’s beds. It was unbelievable.”
“There was a tragedy in our village. It was the communist-controlled election, and our entire village cast a white ballot (declaring their opposition to the communist one-party rule – transl.’s note). There was not a single communist in the village. And for this the communists murdered the priest. They blamed him for it. But he was so careful. He never said a word about politics in his sermons. Not even once. He avoided getting involved in politics, but still the poor man had to pay for it. He was a native from Ostrava.” Interviewer: “Do you remember his name?” – “Alois Kadleček. It was forbidden to speak about it. They said that he suffered a stroke.” Interviewer: “And how did they kill him?” – “The bells tolled at night from Saturday to Sunday. Bells always tolled when somebody died. All people ran out to see what happened. The woman, who was coming to him to clean the house, came there in the morning with the parish clerk. All the doors in the rectory were open. The priest was lying on the ground in the garden. He had only his underwear, he was not dressed. That was unheard of. He never went to the garden. He lived with his old mother. She was eighty-one or eighty-five years. She suffered a shock. She didn’t know anything and she died in agony eleven days later. She never regained consciousness. The priest was dead. The communists said that he went out and that he suffered a stroke and was lying there in the garden under the tree.”
They could try as they wanted, but not one of us left our order.
Anna Šťastná, sister Dobromila -1951
photo: VRKOČOVÁ, L. Svědectví: Osudy politických vězńů 1947-1976. Praha-Pankrác, 2007.
photo: VRKOČOVÁ, L. Svědectví: Osudy politických vězńů 1947-1976. Praha-Pankrác, 2007.
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Anna Šťastná, or Sister Dobromila by her nun’s name, was born in 1928 in Vacenovice. When she was just twelve years old she decided to serve God and enter a convent. In 1950 she made her vows in the Congregation of the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul. On September 28, 1950, all the nuns were deported to Bílá Voda. Sister Dobromila spent one year there in horrible conditions without any amenities. This was followed by deportation to factories in Krásná Lípa and Trutnov. Thanks to an intervention of her sister superior she then began working as a nurse in the retirement home in Zborovice and later in Kroměříž. In 1986 she was forced to go to Bílá Voda again, and the order left only in 1990 after the fall of communism. At present she lives in the convent of Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul in Kroměříž.
