They thought that he would come back
Alena Buchalová was born on the 23rd of July in 1930 in Boskovice as the only child of Kristýna and Jaroslav Konečný. She lived in the vicinity of the Jewish neighbourhood and in her childhood, she played with everyone regardless of their nationality or religion. In 1942, she witnessed the forced departure of the Jewish inhabitants of Boskovice. Her uncle, Stanislav Zána helped the resistance fighters in the Vysočina region. She herself witnessed his arrest by the Gestapo during her stay in Malé Tresné. After she finished the first five grades of basic school, she went to another school for four years but the last year, she and her schoolmates had to work in a former textile factory that produced coats for Germany which was undergoing severe bombing at that time. After the war, she attended the two-year secondary school, the Public Business School in Blansko where she had two Jewish classmates who had survived the Holocaust. She has kept in contact with Lizzy Schwarzer (Dysckievicz) who now lives in London for all their lives and visited each other several times. In 1949, she married Přemysl Buchal and in 1952, their son Přemysl was born. She worked as an accountant first in the Minerva company in Boskovice and later, until 1989, in the local hospital. For all her life, she has been a member of the church choir, of the Janáček choir and she played in an amateur theatre troupe. After her husband’s death, she has lived in her house in Boskovice along with her son’s family (2022).