Hana Vondrášková

* 1937

  • "It's called Pteč, a forest where all the German soldiers were waiting for orders to advance. And because there were cars, or I don't know what, my parents heard it. They went home, they knew something was going on because there was a terrible rumble. And my mother came to us and said quickly that I should help dressing my little brother and go to my grandfather, that we had to run away, as the soldiers were coming. She said directly that the soldiers were coming. So we did it and where I went to the first class, there was my grandfather, so I took the brother there. It took a lot of work, I remember that too, because he was two years old and he didn't want to go anywhere. So I gave him some nails that he could hammer then by my grandfather and so on and I persuaded him and we really ran away. But as soon as we left, the German soldiers came. They went straight, there were too many of them and they went over the wall, because we had a fenced garden by the forest, so they went through the fence and beat the wall and went and shouted terribly. And they put them all against the wall. Coincidentally, only my grandmother was beaten because she bent down to put on her shoe, because they both screamed and didn't leave the house fast enough."

  • "Then at the year 1968 they invited us. Mauthausen was somewhere separate and Ravensbrück also separately and in some big restaurant. And there came all those women, and they were from England and France, and everywhere possible. And I was sitting at a table with a photo of my mother. I looked at each lady, because in my confused little head I thought, maybe I'd see her, possibly… Well, I thought nonsense completely. But it so happened that a lady came to me and told me, you are Marenka Kontová. And she said that she knew my mother and that they took the train together and the train from Ravensbrück, the soldiers went with them and the train always ran a short distance and stopped and the soldiers jumped out and adjusted it, because there was something over the rails, some kind of danger that it would no longer be possible to drive. And it took an hour or two maybe, and we kept waiting for it to be fixed so that we could move on. And they were already approaching Ostrava, but were still in Poland. Well, they also went to the toilet and stuff, but as it stopped again, my moth said she couldn't stand it and said she was going to the trees, there were some shrubs there, three trees and shrubs, and she ran there, just went. Well, coincidentally, the train started running right away. Well, they stomped and shouted, and no one stopped it, bad luck. So they took her bag and threw it out the window. They shouted, but nothing happened. That is what she told me."

  • "And it was close to Orlík, and there it just happened that a certain, I don't know the name anymore, so he reported it to the gendarmes. He made a visit at the police station reporting to the gendarmes that a man who was unknown had appeared there, so it was already known that they had landed there, that they had jumped down there. So, they started surveying the surroundings, but we were still quite far away. But suddenly a gendarme from Chraštice, from the local gendarme station, started walking around our house often, and my grandmother became terribly afraid and told me, to call her quickly, when I see him. Well, Grandma always went to the gendarme, I remember, and brought him eggs or a present. And what are you doing here, she asked, and he said, but that's how we inspect the villages here, my task is to walk around here. And he said goodbye nicely again, but it was just obvious that they were watching us a bit."

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    Příbram, 22.01.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:19:22
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Even after twenty years, I kept looking for her

Hana Kontová in 1947
Hana Kontová in 1947
photo: archiv pamětnice

Hana Vondrášková née Kontová was born on July 24, 1937 in Holušice near Kozárovice in the Příbram region, she had a four years younger brother. Father Josef Konta worked as a stonemason in the granite quarries in Kozárovice, mother Marie looked after the children in a rich Jewish family in Prague before the war; later she was at home. From April 1944, the family assisted four paratroopers from the Chalk airdrop with hiding and supplies. A month later, the group was betrayed. In May 1944, the Gestapo arrested Hanina’s father, Josef Konta, and took him to Terezín and later to Mauthausen. Hana and her brother managed to escape to their grandparents during the raid, and their mother was released. She was not arrested by the Gestapo until August 1944. She was taken to Terezín, where she met her husband briefly, then moved to Ravensbrück. Hana grew up with her aunt in Prague, her brother also stayed in Prague, but with other relatives. Hana spent the end of the war with her grandparents in Holušice and recalls the liberation by the Red Army in May 1945. After the war, only her father returned from the concentration camp, and for several years he stayed in various hospitals and sanatoriums with tuberculosis and bone tuberculosis. It was not until 1968 that Hana learned what had happened to her mother during a family reunion in Ravensbrück. Hana Vondrášková graduated from a pedagogical grammar school, then taught at the primary school in Chraštice and until 2002 at the 5th primary school in Příbram. She got married in 1959 and had two children. She recalls the arrival of the occupying forces in August 1968 and the Velvet Revolution in November 1989. Nowadays she lives in Příbram.