Věra Fabiánová

* 1937

  • "They ransacked everything, all the letters, they stole all the things, even the cameras... we had to be in the kitchen, but when they left, they looked like Gestapo, and they left and just... my mom was crying, the apartment was left messed up, the beds, what they were looking for... my dad and his brother had a little workshop there, a cupboard and a workbench like this, like a table. They talked about it there, about the technology and the radio. That was perhaps not forbidden immediately, perhaps after the war. Treason... first life imprisonment, then he appealed and got twenty-five years of hard imprisonment. So, they worked in those mines and dad, when he came back to that Vavřineč in the 1960, he was afraid to go home, he did not know the way. They put them in those rags, in those criminal rags, gave them a little suitcase kind of torn up, and he was afraid to go home. He said he did not know money, he did not know how to travel, he did not know anything. Because in those eleven years, a lot had changed."

  • “Then my dad was arrested, in 1949, and they let us live in that apartment for about three years. So, we lived there for about seven or eight years. Well, and then they moved us out right away, saying we had a little house in Vavřineč, so we should go back there. And now dad was locked up, and now, once a week, when we were still in Mělník, mom had to take clean shirt and undershorts and take it to dad to Litoměřice. But she never saw him. She did not see him for a year. Only the clothes and she brought them home torn and bloody. That is what the communists did, they used to beat them up like that. And they always wanted them to confess to something. And the trial was a year later. The, what do you call it... the People's Court. In Litvínov, and there were all the bad people there, shouting, you know... how they actually... they wanted us not to go to Russia, to go to England, did not they. They actually fought to make us better off... And then he worked in the uranium mines for Russia for eleven years..."

  • “And then it happened that Zlata Pechová did not send us any letters any more, they imprisoned dad in that year, 1949. He was in a custody for a year. It was in Litoměřice. Mom used to visit him, there was not much clothes [to wash] and she always brought a torn shirt with blood stains, I remember that. And she always cried and always [said]: where do I get the clothes? As clothes were not generally available at that time. And so this lasted for a year. Then, dad was arrested and some other gentlemen, too, Mr. Holman and all those from Řepín, but, mainly, dad's friend Mr. Jindřich who manufactured grist grinders and Mr. Hořejší of Mlazice who made baby prams, he was sentenced to death. He was hung. He did nothing, believe me. And dad got a life sentence but he appealed so he got twenty five years of hard prison. So mom only saw him at that court, as it was the people's court or how they called it at that time and mom cried, you know, it was cruel!”

  • "One day, dad brought an English pilot to our house. And he said, Věruška, an uncle came to visit us but you must not tell it to anyone. And so mom cut slices of homemade bread, spread lard on them, and I remember it, how I always looked at her. And then dad and Mr. Martinovský, who worked in that forest, in Řepín and such, he worked as a forester in Řepín. I do not know how they made each other understood, [probably] through Zlata Pechová who used to help dad with how they had the transceiver. Dad had a transceiver and they transmitted news to England, simply. So I remember of all that only how dad told us how they hid him in Repin: Mr. Tomiga, Father Tomiga, Mr. Holman and other gentlemen whose names I do not remember. Maybe I could remember but then, it would be just from stories. And then they took him to that sugar refinery and he helped them too and they took him further on and they helped him this way..."

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How could they torment such a good and brave man?

Thirteen years old Věra
Thirteen years old Věra
zdroj: archív pamětnice

Věra Fabiánová, née Růžičková, was born on the 31st of March in 1937 in Vavřineč, a village on the edge of Mělník. During WWII, her father, Josef Růžička, was connected to the resistance group Národní mstitel [National Avenger] and he participated in hiding and saving a British pilot. In 1949, during a search in her father‘s house, a transceiver and a hand gun was found which he kept from the war. He was arrested and after being held in custody for a long time, he was sentenced for high treason to twenty five years in prison. Other members of the resistance group were arrested and tried as well, one of them was sentenced to death. Josef Růžička was serving his sentence, among others, in the Jachymov labour camp where his family could visit him once in a month. He got an early release due to an amnesty in 1960, after having served eleven years in prison. Witness‘ older brother Miloslav Růžička graduatded from a secondary technical school despite bad family background. Věra apprenticed as a hairdresser and worked in Mělník In 1955, she got married and raised two children.