Věra Kavková

* 1937

  • “Suddenly, the door opened during classes at the eleven-year school and two men came in. They were wearing leather coats up to their ankles and it brought back the feeling when I saw the Nazis as a child when they stormed into the classroom and wanted us to say ‘Heil Hitler‘ and they measured our skulls. They measured the length and width of the face and wrote down the colour of the eyes. It brought back the feeling and when I saw them and they said her name and to take her stuff and come with them I knew that I would not meet her in the classroom ever again.”

  • “Shortly after his [father´s] arrest, the Germans came to the classroom. We did not go to school for half a year, but when we still attended it - in the first year, the Germans came there. I can still see them wearing long leather black coats and they wanted us pupils to salute: ‘Heil Hitler,‘ and raised our hands. And because my father was arrested, I crossed my hands because I did not realize what consequences it could have for my class teacher. So they asked me several times: ‘Heil Hitler.‘ – ‘No!‘ And it went so far that I was taken to the principal´s office, I could have caused problems to the management of the school as well. I did not realize it as a child. I got - fortunately, they somehow solved it - I got a month-house arrest, I could not leave the house.”

  • “I know that when there were air raids in Hulín and it was close, I was, as a child, lying on the bed and thinking to myself: ‘Dear God, please, let it kill us now, let us not die of suffocating here‘ I remember that after an air raid in Hulín, I was coming out of the old sugar factory, from the Zanášeks family and saw a man coming and carrying a dead girl in his hands. I can still see it.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Brno, 26.11.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 58:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 2

    Brno, 07.12.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:25:18
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

One could choose either to agree or not to agree. I chose not to.

Věra Kavková, 2021
Věra Kavková, 2021
zdroj: Věra Kavková

Věra Kavková was born on 22 September 1937 in Kroměříž. Her father Ladislav Kavka (1905–1977) worked in a savings bank in Kroměříž, her mother Marie, née Mlčochová (1913–2002) was a stay-at-home spouse. During the war, her father was, together with future president Ludvík Svoboda, active in the Kroměříž group of Defence of the Nation resistance organization. The father was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, he was then imprisoned in Ostrava and later in concentration camp Gross-Rosen near Wroclaw. He returned home approximately two months before the end of the war. The family spent the liberation in Hulín. After the Secondary-school leaving exam in 1955, she graduated from the Pedagogical Faculty at J. E. Purkyně University in Brno and became a history teacher. She taught at the university in Brno in the second half of the 1950s. However, first, she had to join the Czechoslovak Communist Party. Her disagreement with the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops ended her job at the university and also membership in the Czechoslovak Communist Party. She later had problems getting a job. The witness had to change work many times and on top of being a teacher, she had to make extra money by cleaning. Věra Kavková lived in Brno in 2021.