“Before I completed my vocational school I received a summons, and I knew that meant I was ‘sentenced’ to go to Germany. I was born in 1924, so that would’ve meant Germany. I was down with quinsy at the time, and the doctor said my tonsils had to go, so I was in hospital. In the meantime my transport left, I was feverish, it took longer, the doctors were nice, they wrote me higher fevers than I actually had. When I returned, I knew I would go to the airport in Ruzyně, where we repaired Ju-52s. We installed new electrical wiring and removed the old ones. [...] Altogether there were twenty of us girls, we laid out cables.”
“[My name is Milena Suková, but I’m also Naděžda] and all my friends and even my parents know me as Naďa. I’m not baptised, it’s just that my father reported my name and made a mistake. He said Milena Naděžda, and since that time I’m just Milena Suková. And at home he said: ‘Yeah, I told them Naděžda.’ So I was Naďa at home. It wasn’t until I went to school that I got my birth certificate and we found out that I was Milena. Everyone knew me as Naďa. I was born at Old Town Square, that’s where my parents lived. My father already had a photographic art studio set up. We could see the clock tower from our window. That’s why I’ve got a picture hanging here which shows what all we could see from our window.”
“[They]’re bringing them food in a basket, and that’s there in the direction of Horoměřická, I made a note of it, where they’re taking it. There was a barricade there because they were afraid of the Germans who were accommodated down there by the palace [Jenerálka]. They were preparing to enter Prague. We already had bad experience with what the Germans were doing here. Right now I can’t remember where all... They herded the people before the tanks. So the barricade was to stop the Germans accommodated there from entering the city. [Did you take that photo, or your father?] [...] As I said, all three of us took photos. Me, my husband, and my father.”
“It was just - German - shoot him, good riddance. They didn’t waste time about it. The wounded Germans were also taken to the hospital here... [in Střešovice]. Those idiots of ours had nothing better to do than to round them up and march them down here to Bořislavka, and there, if you may, they murdered the lot of them. They had to dig their own graves, and I’d like to know, because they were supposed to be building on that spot many a times, and they never have. I know exactly where it is, they even came to get Dad to go take pictures of it. Dad came home and Mum another half a day putting him back together again. He was completely shaken by it, by what those boys of ours had done. It’s awful when an opportunity like that is taken by the worst sort of people. Those are very bad memories.”
“I spoke about it in my class at the time, they wanted to know. No big fears, we survived Austria [the Austro-Hungarian Empire], we’ll survive this as well - laughter. Of course, they sent me packing from school. My last job was at the pathology lab in Motol Hospital. I photographed things there that, when I started, I didn’t know if I could stomach. The head doctor let me wait long enough. ‘Plenty of time. Go pick up your clothes. It’ll get there.’”
The opportunities of war are taken by the worst sort of people
Milena Suková roz. Kimlová
photo: dobové -květen 1945, současné Hynek Moravec
photo: dobové -květen 1945, současné Hynek Moravec
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Milena (Naďa) Suková was born in 1924 in Prague. Her father was the Prague photographer Emanuel Kimla. Although her birth certificate gives her name as Milena, everyone calls her Naďa. Her aunt was the well-known writer Marie Majerová. She enjoyed helping her father in his studio, and she learnt to be a photographer. During the war she was put to forced labour at Ruzyně Airport, repairing the electric installations of Junkers Ju-52 aeroplanes. In May 1945 she and her father documented the Prague Revolt and the liberation by the Red Army in Dejvice and Hanspaulka. After the war she married and completed her school through a correspondence course. In the 1950s and ’60s she taught biology and physics at a primary school. After August 1968 she was fired and banned from teaching and expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. From the 1970s until her retirement she worked as a photographer at the pathology lab of Motol Hospital.
