Eva Černá

“My older brother, Jaromír, didn't want to join either the secret state police – the StB – or the Communist party. He was a partisan and really fit in well among the partisans because he was such a brave man. However, since he didn't want to join these communist organizations, he started to dislike what was going on around him Therefore he joined the resistance movement again. This time, it was the so-called 'third resistance', directed against the communist regime. Even before the February coup of 1948, he joined the resistance group 'Jarmila', that was later renamed to 'Svetlana'. If I remember it correctly, this resistance group had something to do with that Laušmann, but I can't really figure out anymore what it was.” “Interviewer: Laušmann, that social-democratic chairman?” “Yes, that was him, I think he was kidnapped in 1955 in Vienna and taken back to Czechoslovakia. And that resistance group, Světlana, had something to do with it. But I don't remember what it was in particular. His daughter was married to a paratrooper by the name of Nechanický, who was later executed. Well, my brother was somehow involved in it. It wouldn't have turned out that badly, but, you know, he was a former partisan and he didn't lack courage. By that time he was already married and had two kids. Actually, the second child - a girl - was on the way and he never got to see her. His wife was a doctor who healed him from his wounds that he suffered after the end of the war. That's how they met – in a hospital. But in 1948, he was away from home again because they were after him and he was on the run. He was supposed to go to Austria. That was the plan. But he was in Vsetín to buy some provisions or something and he was recognized by some guy who knew him. That guy was escorting him to the police station and my brother was trying to persuade him to let him go. But he wouldn't let him go and so my brother decided to flee, because he didn't put him in handcuffs, nor did he disarm him. So my brother ran away when they stepped into the park and that guy started to shoot at him. My brother shot back and fatally wounded the man. But before he died, he managed to tell the people that gathered around him who shot him. My brother was also hit in the shooting. He was hit in the leg but managed to get away. He crossed the river somewhere and escaped. But it was no good to him because there were just too many traitors in those days. He was betrayed by friends he believed could be trusted. They promised him to take him over the border to Austria but he got arrested in the car already. It had been arranged. It was a trap. They took him to Uherské Hradiště then to Grebeníček. He was hanged.”

“The shelter was about three by three meters, with bunk beds, an improvised chair and an improvised table. Then there was an iron stove and that was it for the furniture. There wasn’t anything else in the shelter. The roof was about two meters high. It was basically a cave dug into a hillside. The hill was above a small creek. They disguised it well - it was hardly noticeable. It was completely covered by moss and the chimney was hidden in a tree stump. The lid was attached to the roof by a wire and was covered by leaves and twigs. When you closed the lid and looked at the shelter from the outside, you couldn’t tell it was a hiding place. It really was a wonderful disguise. There were two or three steps leading inside. My father later built a pantry that was attached to the shelter and we were storing foodstuff there. Somebody from Pětikov was supplying us with salami. There were about three families that supported us, but most of all the Dračka family. We were getting milk and stuff from them. We moved into the shelter about five days after our arrival to Moravičany, after the guys had built it in the forest. In the meantime, we were sleeping outside on a blanket in a tent. That’s how my husband got heavy sciatica and had to be operated. When one of the partisans came into the village and told us the shelter was ready, we immediately packed our stuff that evening and went there, because those five days were terrible. It had already been awful at home but when we were waiting in the village it was even worse. I realized that if we had been revealed, they would shoot the whole family that was hiding us at their place. But the Dračkas were considering it as normal to help us. It’s hard to understand that. They were risking a lot. Once, some Russian partisans came into the village but they did not tell them about us. They didn’t want anybody to know about it. No one ever talked to anyone else about it. When we were packing our stuff, I realized that Přemek had fever. You could tell because he was burning. But I remained quiet about it because Mrs. Dračková would never let us go if she knew it. She was far too kind.” “Interviewer: how old were the Dračkas?” “Well, they had a daughter who was a year younger than me. I was nineteen years old and Jitka was eighteen. So they were forty something, I guess. They had probably already been a bit older when they had her.” “Interviewer: and what did they do?” “They had a farm. It was a huge estate. So we packed our stuff and disappeared from the village. Someone had already taken a sink for Přemeček to the shelter. It used to be called ‘basin’ in those days. Well, we were washing ourselves in the nearby stream. We also washed Přemeček’s diapers there and we then hung them on the branches of the trees around the creek. At first, it was quite tough because it was in the winter when we moved there and it was very cold. It got better when the spring came. We were heating the place during the day but not at night, because we didn’t want the smell of the smoke to reveal us. My dad heard somewhere that oak wood didn’t produce any smell at all so he went into the woods to collect oak twigs for the stove.”

“Interviewer: where did you spend the year 1968? In Němčice?” “No, in 1968, we were still in Budětsko. And because we were disobedient, we had to leave. My husband signed a petition together with some of the other teachers and those who signed it got into trouble. He was sacked as director and I was put in that position instead. Then they called me up and tried to persuade me but I told them that I shared my husband's views and that I wouldn't stand up against him. I also told them that I was religious and that I would stay that way.” “Interviewer: those people were secret-state police people?” “No, these were the chieftains from our school, the top brass from the school committee and the regional committee. They told us they'd give us a last chance. They said we must not go to the church. They also put us under tight supervision of one of the teachers that belonged to the regional committee of the party. But he was also a teacher, a professor who taught at a grammar school. He then left to Němčice and we got very good friends with him. We played in the theater with him. I can't complain about it. We had it very good in Němčice.” “Interviewer: In the fifties, when the orders were closed down and the priests were being imprisoned, did you protest? Was there something one could do? Was it possible to effectively protest?” “There was nothing you could do against it.” “Interviewer: Did it ever happen that you had a priest who didn't show up for service the next day?” “Of course, and we were best friends with these priests, that was the best part. We had a lot of fun. Our best friends were the priests. Of course that was very harmful to us.” “Interviewer: did they tell you their stories from the prisons?” “Of course they did. One of them used to be the abbot in Teplá. Then they arrested him and put him behind bars. He was incarcerated by the Germans already and then the Communists imprisoned him again. He wrote a very interesting book. He was helping the inmates in the camps and prisons he spent his years in. He had the chance to swap a corpse for a living man.” “Interviewer: he was the schreiber, right?” “No, he wasn't the schreiber, but he was carrying the corpses there or something like that. I really don't remember anymore. But I remember that even some later minister owed his life to that man. He was probably in Buchenwald, yes. A lot of people were coming to see him. Once, a whole family came to see him from Italy. They came to thank him for the life of some grandfather of theirs, who had already died. We used to call him 'Mr. Prior'. Eventually, in 1968, he got the state permission and was allowed to serve in Bohuslavice which is close to Budětsko. Then we had another friend, a priest who painted these pictures. His name was Jemelka and he was a parson in Laškov. He came to teach at our school. It was an elderly man and we became very good friends. He was also a good friend with that abbot. They spent a lot of time at our place, having long discussions. Then we were incriminated for entertaining contacts with the hierarchy. It used to be like that.”

“All of a sudden, at the peak of the night, somebody knocked on the window. It was Jarek Škrabal from Jaroměřice, Pepa Rikitan and one more guy. Rikitan said: 'you've been revealed. You have to leave immediately'. I have no idea where he learned about it. Probably at the police station where he had his contacts. It was good people serving there. So we immediately started to pack our belongings. Rikitan said that the boys – he meant my brother Bohumil and my husband – would come with them into the forest, joining the partisans. We were supposed to travel to Olomouc and then to Moravičany. We were instructed to take the first train to Moravičany after midnight, that someone would be waiting there for us and that we should not worry about anything else. We set out in the evening, after we packed our stuff. In fact, there was not much to take with us, a few diapers for the baby boy and that was it. We left most things behind.” “Interviewer: It must have been really cold.” “Oh yes, it was very cold. Everything was covered in snow. We didn't want to go to the train station in Strážisko, because it's a small train station and we would draw a lot of attention there because it was very unusual to travel somewhere like this at six o'clock. Therefore, we walked to Ptení, Ptenský courtyard. There's another train station in Ptení. I took the baby stroller to a friend of mine's house. Her name was Dana Laborová. I told her that I would come to pick it up later. Then we boarded the train to Olomouc, where we stayed for the night at my uncle's. It was the brother of my mom. In the night, there was an air raid. They left the house to hide in the anti-air raid shelter but we couldn't, since we weren't registered there. The first train that went to Moravičany after midnight was the three o'clock train. It was a very early train but we acted upon our instructions and boarded that train. When we arrived in Moravičany, nobody was waiting for us. We walked around the train station for a bit until the employees at the station started to look at us strangely. We didn't know what to do since we didn't know anybody in that place, we had no names, no addresses to go to and ring the bell. Everything I knew was that my husband talked to Viktor about some Mr. Švec. That was the only name I knew. Rikitan was talking about that guy – he said they were seeing him or something. We decided to go on foot to that Vranová Lhota. When we came to the outskirts of Moravičany, my baby boy was screaming, he was very cold and we knew we couldn't go on like that. There was a house, it wasn't plastered, so we thought to ourselves that maybe there wouldn't be any collaborators living there. We walked inside the yard and saw a farm building. We walked onto the porch and entered the kitchen. The lights were on and the room was warm. We waited there for a while wondering what would come next. Then a woman walked inside the room with a head cloth – it was probably the housewife. We greeted her but she hardly reacted. She seemed to be frowning and particularly unwelcoming. I asked her if we could warm up some milk for the baby, that he's hungry. She pointed at the stove and told us to warm it up. Then she disappeared again. We changed the baby boy's diapers and fed him. All the time we were asking ourselves what was going to come next. We didn't know what to do. Then I had an idea. I told my dad: 'Dad, what if they didn't know that it was the first train or what if they believed we wouldn't take the first one?'. What if there's another train coming?”