Albína Charvátová

* 1937

  • "Well, the first chocolate... When we were at the cottage, then the Germans, they helped the farmers there, when we had the cottage on their land, my mother also used to go there to help them during the harvest and even like that. So from that - and she, the German, was dating some American. So she brought me this, such a thick chocolate and gum like this, I saw that for the first time, because it hadn´t been available during the war. We were playing the naughty maid, going, 'Hey, coffee with whipped cream!' And we didn't know what whipped cream was, we meant the one made from egg whites..."

  • "And now they came: 'The war is over, there is peace!' And we went to the square. And there were the students, secondary school students. And they were throwing pictures out of the town hall, I thought they were some kind of saints, Hitler and that. And then they started playing the national anthem. And suddenly there were Germans on all sides, machine guns, and the only space that was clear was the street by the tower. That's what I experienced. Now these people, there was a gentleman, a grey-haired man fell down, they were trampling on him, it was all running into it. But they said that the commander had put a ban on shooting, otherwise it... it was no longer worth it."

  • "Come on, nothing was happening. And when there was an air raid, we took turns, there was always somebody who was banging one of those - if you saw it in the old film - they'd bang on it, instead of like they're ringing now, so they'd bang on it, even to signal the break. So we'd go out, to the shelter, but we weren't in the shelter, it used to be a beautiful blue sky, the bombers like that, we used to watch them. So we were quite glad to get away [from school]."

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    České Budějovice, 10.12.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 01:24:57
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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If it hadn‘t been for February 1948, I‘d have been well off

Period portrait
Period portrait
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Albína Charvátová, née Slípková, was born on 23 February 1937 in České Budějovice. She remembers experiences from the war, for example the bombing of Budějovice in March 1945 or the suicide of the then mayor of Budějovice, Mr. David, in May 1945, which she saw with her own eyes. Her father had a shoe workshop in Budějovice, which was nationalized by the communists. Moreover, his parents lost their savings as a result of the currency reform in 1953. She has lived in České Budějovice all her life, so she lived through the occupation in August 1968, the demonstrations on its anniversary in August 1969 and the events of the Velvet Revolution. In 1969 her sister emigrated to the USA and for 20 years they kept in touch only through letters. Albina did not visit her sister until after the Velvet Revolution. She worked all her life in the Igla needle factory.