Milena Dolanská

* 1927

  • "There was a certain Colonel Tyler. He was already retired, he had a beautiful big villa there, he was very social, so was his lady, and they invited visitors there. And our mother was about eighteen at the time, so they invited her there as well, among other girls, and there were a few officers there. Well, they met there. Grandpa was very much against it because he was an officer, and Grandpa wouldn't allow it. Though he had a hard time coping with it, he did. They had a wedding, and immediately after the wedding, they moved to Košice, where dad already had an apartment prepared. Grandma took them there, and then they were there. I was supposed to be born there, but my grandmother insisted that my mother had to go to Prague, so I was born in Prague."

  • "As children, we didn't know anything at all, maybe mom. She never talked about it. She never said anything to us. I just know she was upset that we kept a pig illegally. Dad always slaughtered it. And when we needed it, he bought another one and fed him since it was small. Well, that was not allowed back then. And once, my mother came to do laundry in the laundry room, and there was a mess. Blankets were scattered there, and apparently, someone must have slept there. So she got angry with dad about who he kept there, that we were in danger, and that they would find out we had an illegal pig when the inspection came. So dad put the pig away, the blankets neatened up and stayed there. Mom didn't even go to the laundry anymore, and she didn't know what was there and what was going on. And after the war, dad explained everything to us. He told us that he had refugees there. They were fleeing the German occupation.'

  • "Dad called him [Bedřich Reicin] the number one criminal." - "And when did he meet him, don't you know?" - "During the war. He claimed that he was definitely a confidant of the Gestapo. I don't know how Dad found out, but he did. And that's why they hated each other. They met at the ministry, dad reported to him after the war, and he said he didn't want him and let Paleček have him. And so General Paleček took him. But he wasn't there for long, then they arrested him, and it was all over." - "And they still investigated dad after the war in 1945?" - "Yes, but he was already secured, investigated, and Reicin was already doing all that." - "Why was he arrested then, don't you know?" - "That time, it was something to do with the occupation, but I don't remember anymore. But then he was released. He was gone for about two months. And then they took him away again. They took him away from home, they took him away on Christmas Eve [1948], we were lucky at all on those Christmas Eves... Then we didn't know about him for several months. My mother searched through all possible sources. Then we found out that he is somewhere in Domeček in Prague. I then got a permit there, and we met there. I saw him broken, his face bloody, so I could guess what happened there. There they punched him, beat him, crashed him. Then he was transferred to Pankrác, where he was put on trial. They took him from Pankrác to Pilsen, where he served a long sentence. But it wasn't enough for them, so he went from Pilsen, from Bory to Slovakia."

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    Hradec Králové, 14.04.2022

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    délka: 01:24:13
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The hard life of a resistance fighter‘s daughter. Communist power broke what the Gestapo could not

Milena Aubrechtová, daughter of Major Franjo Aubrecht, in 1945
Milena Aubrechtová, daughter of Major Franjo Aubrecht, in 1945
zdroj: witness archive

Milena (Růžena Vladimíra) Dolanská was born on 11 August 1927 in Prague. Her father, Franjo Aubrecht, served as a cavalry officer in Košice at the time, but her maternal grandmother, Marie Ryšánková from Bohdaneč, insisted on giving birth in Prague. Before the war, the family lived in Košice, then Brandýs nad Labem and Bohdaneč near Pardubice. The father had fought in the First World War, first on the Russian front, then as a legionnaire in Italy, where he received four war medals. He was also a successful horse racing competitor, who ranked three times in the top places of Velká Pardubická. During the war, the father joined the resistance. He was active in the National Defense and ÚVOD. At the end of the war, he founded his own resistance group. He was involved, for example, in harboring paratroopers from the Silver A group or in espionage in Synthesia Semtín. Milena Dolanská completed four grades of grammar school. And after a series of arrests, she transferred to a family school. In 1945, her father got into disputes with the communist wing of the army led by Bedřich Reicin. He was imprisoned just after the war. And he got arrested again on Christmas Day 1948 and given twenty-five years in a trumped-up trial. After the war, Milena Dolanská married her father‘s colleague Rudolf Vařečka, who was also arrested and sentenced to twelve years in 1949 after mediating his wife‘s meeting with the imprisoned Franjo Aubrecht. In 1948, her daughter Milena was born, but the family was left with no means. So she had to go to work, which she found very difficult to get. She first worked in a dairy, then in Synthesia, and finally in Hradec Králové. She divorced her husband during his stay in prison, remarried in 1954 to Vítězslav Dolanský, and moved with him to Cheb for several years. Her younger brother Vladimír was also persecuted and wrongly accused of murder. He later tried unsuccessfully to escape across the border and eventually moved to Austria to join his wife. Franjo Aubrecht left prison in 1960 after the amnesty of President Antonín Novotný and went to Dvor Králové, to Kladno, and then to Prague. He died on 23 January 1985 at the age of 88. Daughter Milena Dolanská lived in Lázně Bohdaneč in 2022.