“I remember a Russian soldier invited me to come to Botič [a stream in Prague, trans.]. There, the Botič stream flowed a short distance from us in Karlín, back there– so I could come there. I can't understand it at all. I went there alone, and grandma and grandpa didn't object at all. I went there. I was around eight years old. He was waiting for me there, he squatted down and sat me on his thigh like that, and he took out a photograph from his chest pocket and showed me it was was his little girl, that she is similar to me and that he hopes he could reunite with her after the war. And he gave me a package of fabric. It was a blue fabric with white dots. I remember that. It really happened, that's how it went. We welcomed the Red Army, we welcomed the soldiers. That’s how we perceived it as time brought history. After the war– we will get to talking about the school– After the war, one day, a woman comes on our floor, and my grandfather says, ‘Who is this, who the hell brought Róza in here?’ It was one of their daughters. ‘What does Róza want from us?’ Well, another woman enters the door. They cry and hug each other. I'm still standing there, I don't know what's going on. My grandfather and grandmother say, ‘That's your mommy.’ And I say that she is very fat. Imagine.”
“Then I remember the raids when the men would stand on the long courtyard gallery and watch where and how the raids were going. Then the sirens started blaring, calling the population to the shelter, so I remember we used to go to the basement. One such experience was very strong because grandma and grandpa went somewhere. I don't know where, somewhere behind the Invalidovna, that's where the tram always used to go. I don't know why they left, but they locked me up at home and a raid was announced. The first thing I grabbed was a briefcase and a doll, and I mainly put things for the doll in the briefcase so that the doll would have something [to wear] and not be cold so that she would have clothes. And I snapped the briefcase shut and started banging on the door. And so the neighbours heard me there, opened the door for me, and I found myself in the shelter, where such long steep stairs led. Supposedly, we were in that cellar for three days and three nights. My grandmother and grandfather were still on their way back. And I was also listening to the radio: ‘Come to our aid, come to the radio’s aid!’ I won't forget that. I heard all of that when I was still in that apartment. Authentically – a call for help and shooting at the same time.”
“I remember another similar situation, when someone from the Gestapo comes, as shown in the movies, those guys in those long coats. Again, I remember when they come and are listing the property there. They go around and write everything down and leave, and I say, ‘Grandma if they come, we won’t let them in here. We won't let them come inside.’ What could my grandma say to that? She even wanted to store some things at a neighbour–whose surname was Černá–in her villa. I don't know what she stored there. Thus begins this period when I also had whooping cough. Then it gets a bit blurry– and the Gestapo came for the second time, and they started taking everything out, and my grandmother is standing in the back of the room, and one of them throws a tie and a glove at her. It's scary. It's a terrible scene. The grandmother is standing there miserably, and I know from later that my grandfather was in the hall and that he supposedly even wanted to take a revolver and start shooting. Fortunately, this did not happen. And I was laying in that bed. I have another recollection of that. They were walking by, and I said, ‘You forgot to take that painting on the wall over there.’ They said something, and then after a while, I was saying, ‘Where are you taking that painting? It is ours!’ So that's my memory of it. And the end takes place in the kitchen. There was only a small stove in the kitchen. I don’t remember, maybe there wasn't even a chair. My Grandma is heating sausages on that stove. There are some buckets. Grandma puts a board on top of one of the buckets. I walk around and somehow fall into that bucket. I don't know if it was ashes– so I started to laugh really hard and said, ‘Grandma, why are you crying?’ So that is what happened in Dejvice when the apartment remained completely empty. And then, when my grandmother went to this neighbour’s house for the things she stored there, the nice Czech neighbour said to her, ‘You didn’t store anything here, Mrs Böhmová.’ So even back then, it was about the characters of people.”
Doris Bartoníčková was born on 10 August 1937 in Brno to Marie Böhmová and a Jewish father, Karel Bock, a butcher from Brno. After the rise of Nazism and the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, the parents divorced in order to protect their daughter. Her father died in the Dachau concentration camp, and Doris and her mother moved to live with her grandparents in Prague. Her mother, Marie Böhmová, engaged in resistance activities, and after being imprisoned in Pankrác, she was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Therefore, little Doris was left alone with her grandparents. To protect her, they destroyed her birth certificate, which indicated her Jewish origin, and hid her from the authorities in several secret locations. Doris Bartoníčková experienced the bombing of Prague by the American Air Force and the Prague Uprising in May 1945. After liberation and the end of World War II, her mother returned from the concentration camp. Doris Bartoníčková graduated from the Higher Pedagogical School in Ústí nad Labem and spent her whole life working as a teacher and educator. Thanks to her individualistic and bohemian approach to life, they refused to accept her to join the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
Doris Bartoníčková with her grandparents Josef Böhm and Marie Böhmová in Dejvice, 1942 (The photo was sent to her mother to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.)
Doris Bartoníčková with her grandparents Josef Böhm and Marie Böhmová in Dejvice, 1942 (The photo was sent to her mother to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.)
