Marie Horáková

* 1935

  • "I remember the big air raid, my mother took me by the hand and we went to the Vítkovice cemetery. She shouldn't have done that. I still can see it to this day. A row of dead, lying next to each other on the lawn. Two rows of dead people. What happened to them afterwards, how they disposed of them all, I don't know, but we went there after the air raid to see. It was a big raid on Ostrava."

  • "As I was going to the first class, or the second class, at the municipal school in Hrabůvka, our class teacher, Mr Michl, one day the door opened and two Gestapo men entered the classroom, the lesson. I can still see them today, leather coats and those flat caps with the death's head. I was so scared. We were all scared, we didn't even flinch. And they immediately rushed to the teacher's desk and the teacher opened the window, and I think he wanted to jump out of the window, and they grabbed him by the collar from behind and dragged him away without speaking. I never saw him again."

  • "The alarm clock in the kitchen went off, and he picked up a gun and shot at the alarm clock. There was such a hole in the kitchen, and the alarm clock, of course, was in smithereens. They probably didn't know it was a clock. I can't explain it other way. But it's true. Dad shouted because we didn't have any other clock, but they didn't care and [we had] the hole in the wall. So they were primitives, the first ones to come."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Stará Ves nad Ondřejnicí, 14.06.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:07:04
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Ostrava, 29.07.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:35:56
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The Communist Party gave a command and brother had to punish his own sister

Photo from company ID card (circa 1970s)
Photo from company ID card (circa 1970s)
zdroj: Witness´s archive

Marie Horáková, née Hořínková, was born on 11 December 1935 in a plain house in Ostrava - Hrabůvka into the family of František Hořínek, a worker, and his wife Rafaela. Marie witnessed the events of the World War II and the liberation. Immediately after finishing primary school she had to start her first job in the accounting department of Vítkovice Ironworks. In the 1950s she completed her education in order to be able to continue her work. In Vítkovice Ironworks she met her future husband Jiří Horák, with whom she has a daughter. The couple lived a fairly peaceful family life until 1968. After the arrival of the Warsaw Pact troops, Jiří Horák was expelled from the party. The reason given by the officials was that he was sleeping at a meeting, but it is possible that he did not agree with the occupation. After this incident, he lost his position as head of price setting and had to start over as an ordinary employee. The couple worked at Vítkovice Ironworks until retirement age. At the time of recording in 2022, Marie Horáková was living with her daughter in Stará Ves nad Ondřejnicí.