“My name is Miloslava Stropková, I was born as Kunclová in 1922 in České Budějovice. Since a third son was born into the family right after me, and mom and dad wanted me to grow up in a nice environment, which was not possible, with business being bad after the war, they sent me to live with aunt Antonia, the youngest sister of my mom, who was then taking care of me, and who was living in České Velenice at that time. Her surname was Nováčková and her husband worked as an engine-driver for the Czechoslovak Railways. I have fond memories of my childhood in České Velenice. While there, I was going to a confectioner’s shop there, and choosing whatever I liked, and they would pack the sweets for me, and I always said that my uncle would pay for it later. They knew me well, and what is great about this is that today from time to time I travel to Gmünd, and I always stop in that confectioner’s in České Velenice, because the shop still exists there. I even talked to the daughter-in-law of that lady who used to be there then, and now I feel like at home there. When I was four years old, we moved to Suché Vrbné, where my aunt had her own house. My grandfather had one house built for each of his daughters. One for himself and his family, because he was living with his sister in Komenského Street (in České Budějovice – ed.´s note) and he had a one-story house built there. They really were a large family.”
“I said I would not by any means work for the Gestapo, and she (prisoner Pujmanová – ed.´s note´) told me: ´Oh come on, it’s the same like if you go to the municipal office to pick up your ID card. There are no interrogations going on.´ I did not believe her, but she advised me to go to the ones in Tábor. One of them was an old prison warden, whom they had sent there, and the other guy was a young boy, he had no clue yet what the Gestapo was capable of. So I worked there for a few days ad then Steinhauser from the Gestapo office in Budějovice sent for me, and he was a bit angry with me, for how come that I worked for the Tábor Gestapo, when by my place of residence I was to belong to the office in Budějovice. I also raised my voice, for I was really not afraid at all. I was so mad at him: ´Please, do not shout at me. I could not have known that you had this vacancy. Tábor did look for a secretary, so I applied there.´- ´You will work here then! ´ - ´All right then, I will work here.´ Marie Pujmanová from Prague was there with me, the communists later killed her husband during an interrogation, he suffered a heart-stroke. She left her four-year-old daughter at home, who later became a pediatrician when she grew up; Pujmanová was older than me, and she was going with me, she wanted to protect me. What mattered was that here were two of us. The interrogations went on like this: ´Where were you born? What is your name? Where do you live? Where do you work?...´One guy replied to this : ´I don’t work anywhere anymore.´ -´But you are missing somebody at home, aren’t you…´ - ´I don’t know whom I should miss?´- ´But you do have one more son? - ´Oh, come on, he is 25, he has been out of the house for a long time already.´ - ´But we know where he is, and we know what he is doing, and that’s why you are here.´- ´I see…´ Some of them were just great.”
“The front was approaching rapidly, and an order to evacuate the camp was given. That had been even before the front came near, on April 10th 1945. The commander ordered emergency exits to be made, to allow the internees to run away to the surrounding meadows, or to Svatobořice, and find a shelter there. That was in case the Germans would want to seize the camp, so that we would not fall into their hands. But the front came so quickly that the SS came there, and some of the internees were to be released and the rest of them taken somewhere else. They had to wake me up. We were going to the offices and reporting out names, but they were not sending the families together, the prisoners were being released by rooms or barracks, for I did not meet my mom there. My dad was with the men, I had no chance of seeing him. They released most of the people; 151 women and 75 men remained there. They were loading us onto buses, vans and trucks. There were trucks in the front, I could not even see all the way there… We came there, and the truck as already full, on the edge there were girls from our village sitting there, and also other people I knew. There was Táňa, one of the Unger sisters, she had been an accountant in the office, civilians like her were working there as well. One of the men there knew her but he did not show it in any way, but when the girls and I were not did not get released…my father was not released either, but I did not know it yet, and neither did I know whether my mom was to be released or not. So these administrators came to us and one of them said: ´Listen, girls, …´ He was speaking especially to the Unger sisters: ´You gotta get out of here. Táňa, your father, I have never told this to your family, but your father has saved me in WWI, he saved my leg from amputation and I have never had a chance repay him. So what you do now… we will cover you, we will divert their attention.´ For there were four or six SS-men or Gestapo men there, and they had hand grenades behind their belts, and long guns, but these were probably not because of us. These men told us that they would cover us and that we should steal away.”
“We arrived to Tábor and there they put us to a flat which was left behind after some court official, whom they had moved out. The women were on left of the staircase, the men on the right. The sanitary conditions there were terrible, there were two rooms, some straw on the floor and that was it. The men’s room was the same. Certain Mr. Knop was guarding in the hallway, he used to be a warden in a German prison. They had drafted them, if he did not want to lose his life, he had to comply with this. He was a very kind man. One morning I woke lying on the bare ground, my mom probably fell asleep under the nervous strain, and the woman who was sleeping next to me, some older granny, was also pressing against my body. I could not stand it anymore; I got up and went to sit in the open door, which led to the hallway. Mr. Knop came to me and asked: ´You cannot sleep?´ - ´I cannot breathe above all.´ For the windows had to be closed, even those in the hallway, because there were guards in the yard, and they had orders to shoot immediately if a window opened. So he let me sit there. The night after, Libuška Fantová found this out, and so there were both of us sitting there. He let us sit there on a bench, and he opened the window and called out: ´Don’t shoot, that’s me!´ And he told the guards: ´There are sick people, they are fainting, I have to open the window, don’t shoot!´ So we were sitting by the open window and breathing. We were happy.”
“(Kaiser, the camp leader – ed.´s note) was stealing so much, that the SS itself imprisoned him. One evening, both of them came. We already knew that there were two of them walking about the camp – the commander and an elderly man, a policeman. We had a roll call; the night was dark and cloudy. We did not have lamps like before, it was difficult to see. This older man did not know how many of us there were. The commander told us that we would remember him as having been kind to us, and treating us nicely, not hurting us, and that he was now leaving for a better position and that this gentleman was to be his successor. Suddenly, a roaring voice was heard, because the older man spoke loudly and he did not know to how many people he was speaking to. The fourth row of us stood higher than the fifth, and he could thus see only a medley of blankets and all the stuff, because we always dressed as much as possible for the night. He said: ´I am a policeman, I am a German, 60 years old. I am here because my commander sent me. I am not here to torture you, but to take care of you and return you safely to your families when the war is over.´ We thought: ´Wow, this is a different story.´ And it was.”
Miloslava Stropková, née Kunclová, was born on October 7th, 1922 in České Budějovice. She had three siblings and due to time limitations and financial difficulties of the family, she was brought up by her aunt in České Velenic. He aunt later moved them to Suché Vrbné. After elementary school at a convent and grammar school, she began working in the South Bohemia Electric Works in 1942. In 1942, all of the Kuncl family was arrested by the Gestapo during Operation E, which was carried out all over the Protectorate with the aim to arrest all family members of those families, where a person had fled from Nazism. In the case of the Kuncl family, this person was a cavalry captain Leopold Kuncl, who had escaped via Poland to England. Miloslava was arrested in Suché Vrbné, where she was found by Czech policemen. The whole family was taken by bus to Tábor and after a short internment there, they were moved by train via Prague and Pardubice to Svatobořice near Kyjov. Miloslava got out of the camp at the end of the war in 1945, when she managed to slip out in the general confusion of the retreating German Army and the arrival of the Red Army. Via Brno, Blansko, Prague and Tábor she returned to her family in České Budějovice. Her aunt did not have any hope that Miloslava would come back. From 1953, she was employed in the Bremen Company, first working eight-hour shifts, but due to her being partially physically handicapped, she worked six hours, she eventually left the position. She then worked as a meal, tickets administrator, in a confectioner’s shop, in restaurants and cafeterias, in a music school. From 1971, she worked as a secretary at the grammar school in Český Krumlov. She retired in 1976. Died in January 2017.
