Zdenka Uhříková

* 1933

  • "And because we could see them from the station, the gendarmerie station, there were these Germans there, and they could see us in the yard. So we had to, everything had to be kept secret so that we couldn't see who was coming to us or who was going away from that yard. So the nurse always took the cow, and she would go and feed it and carry it to the bunker. The food- or afterwards, I didn't know why she was doing it, in our house, they used to beat first when there was no electricity, they used to beat with flails. And the straw was straight, so she took scissors and cut strips of oat straw like that. And I said, "What's she cutting it for? And she'd bring it to him, and he'd make this nice little cassette out of this straw that she brought home. She came from his place, so she brought the cassette, such a nice made one."

  • "Well, then we went home, and we went to see, I don't know what the idea was from that Auntie Gajdošova... We went there to the other creek near Prlov, the girl from Prlova was shot. There were, the Germans were leading them, we saw it in the daytime, how they, I don't know, the girl was from Prlov, those guys, I don't know where they were from, I can't remember. So they led them, and they had to dig a grave, and they shot them there. And we knew where it was, so as we went from that village, we went to see, so we found them, we saw them shot there, and I know the one guy had... they only threw a bit of dirt on them."

  • "Such a small cottage. There was no water, no electricity. For water, as it used to be in the old days, you used to go to a well and carry it in these little tubs or buckets. And it was hung up, it was what I would call, it was called dragonflies that were put here by the neck and at the end it had a, it was a wooden perch that had a chain on it, and there was a little hook at the end. And it was dipped into the well, and the water was taken up, and then it was hung on the dragonflies and hung by the neck, and that's how the water was carried into the cottage. And that was a distance of eighty metres or more. And it was in the meadows, and how many times when we went, carrying the water, even the kids had to do it, our feet slipped, we rolled, the buckets rolled up, the water flowed out, and we had to go back to get water again."

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    Hošťálková, 28.04.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:28:22
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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We used to throw the flowers of the bird cherry and its white blossoms at the passing soldiers who liberated us

Zdenka Uhříková, Hošťálková 2023
Zdenka Uhříková, Hošťálková 2023
photo: Post Bellum

Zdenka Uhříková was born on 2 July 1933 in Hošťálková in the Wallachia region, in a pastoral settlement still called Pod Vrchem. Her parents, Josef Uhřík and Jana, née Češková, supported the partisan movement during the Second World War - their father became a liaison delivering messages and ammunition, and in a bunker in the forest above the cottage, they took care of a wounded escaped Soviet prisoner of war. The family belonged to the local Evangelical community. They farmed about six hectares, but at the time of collectivisation, they refused to join a unified agricultural cooperative (JZD) and remained private farmers until 1969. Zdenka Uhříková graduated from a town school and a business school in Vsetín. She worked all her life in Hošťálková at the Sandrik national enterprise, where knives and cutlery were produced. At the time of filming in 2023, she lived in Hošťálková.