Marie Henzlová

* 1930

  • "The 1968, I remember being in the yard, we didn't have a water pipe, of course, I was taking water from the forest from a well. So, I know I was washing clothes in the yard and crying when I was listening to the radio. And my brother? He even had problems, helping in the winter in the boiler room in Lipová in the factory. There was a leaflet against the Russians, so they gave it to him, he gave it to someone else and someone reported him. That everyone read it, that he spread it, and he got a trial. So, he said, 'Arrest me then. I was arrested when the Germans were here, now I could be arrested again.' So, in the end they didn't charge him with anything."

  • "My brother called from Boskovice, he was going to a school of economics there, he had acquaintances there, so he called the local authority, so that someone could come for him on a motorcycle, it was Saturday. My friend and I scrubbed the ground, as it was cleaned on Saturday, so we knelt on the ground and scrubbed the ground. He came to the kitchen, and before I got to him, all the neighbors came there. They surrounded him. So, I knelt back on the floor, cried and rubbed on."

  • "My father and brother were taken to a concentration camp in Flossenbürg, Bavaria, sometime in January. There they were going to a stone pit and my dad already had pneumonia and he was used to being more warm in the store, and so was my brother Tomáš. My dad died of pneumonia on March 7, and my brothers buried him by themselves into a mass grave in just a blanket. However later, the kapo found out, so they received twenty-five more wounds each. Then, the Americans were approaching, so they took them away from the front. My brother Tomáš already had a fever, he was no longer conscious, so he pushed his way to the truck. His brother did not want to leave him alone, he tried to keep him, but the SS soldier pushed him there, so my brother went up after him. And in Plattling [a city in Germany] they spent the night there in a shed, and he died in the morning. So, my brother buried him there in the meadow."

  • "One morning on November 7, my mother and I were still asleep, the Gestapo knocked on the door with their riffle butts, we came into the kitchen and all the men were already lying on the floor. Another neighbor got involved there, who came to ask if my brother would go to the mill to take the grain with him, it worked like that. So, he lay down with them. They drove them all into the truck and I was sent out of the cottage to go to some relatives."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Boskovice, 28.02.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:22:09
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I lost most of my loved ones

Marie Henzlová around 1950
Marie Henzlová around 1950
zdroj: archive of the witness

Marie Henzlová was born on October 15, 1930 in Buková in the Drahanská Highlands as the fourth child of the couple Anežka and Tomáš Švec. The whole family, including the older sister Anežka and her husband Pravoslav Kovář, helped the Partisans. She herself brought food to the Partisan soldiers and was the only one in the family not to be arrested at the age of fourteen. Most of her closest ones lost their lives because of their resistance activities. Her father and brother Tomáš died during imprisonment in the Flossenbürg concentration camp. No particular information was ever found regarding the fate of Anežka‘s mother. A month after the war, her brother Josef returned from the concentration camp where he buried his father and then his brother during his imprisonment. Her sister and brother-in-law died during the Partisan raids in the Drahanská Highlands at the end of the World War II. In 1949, Marie married Josef Henzl and they had three sons together. Her husband received a disability pension after a serious injury, and she was able to finish school and learn cooking at a later age. She spent most of her life in Boskovice, where she worked for several years as a cook at the local Minerva company. After protracted health complications and a general collapse of the body, she also received a disability pension at the age of forty-four. Her husband died first, and her two older sons died recently; Pavel died tragically and Josef died during the pandemic due to complications of Covid-19. She has a certificate of resistance and has the status of a war veteran. In 2021, Marie Henzlová received the Medal of the South Moravian Region.