Milada Kocourková

* 1930

  • "And then there was the seizing of horses. There is this place where the bus station is now. There used to be carousels and circuses and so on. During the war, farmers had to go past the place when they were surrendering their horses. The horses were seized. As kids we used to go and watch the farmers crying a their horses were taken away. Some of them put a nail on the horse to make it limp so they wouldn't take it away. You see, it still gives me goose bumps. I felt so sorry for those horses. I remember that."

  • "The Eisners were four, two adults, two children - and they had a maid. And then they had two more Jewish families move into the villa down there. Then they got the stars of David. I really get goose bumps when I think of them. They got a sheet like you have a sheet of stamps. I was cutting it up and Mr. Eisner brought the clothes and my dad stitched them on. That was awful. And the children, Pavel and Eva - we weren't allowed to see them and they weren't allowed out. I saw them a few times after that during the war. But during the war, when rations were terrible, they must have had even worse rations than we did. We got two kilos of apples per family for Christmas that year. And so my mother said, 'They have nothing, so go in the evening, when it's dark, and bring them some.' The apples smelled so good, I remember it like today. I had such a craving for them, but I brought them there. And then suddenly the family disappeared."

  • "There were no disputes before, but in 1939 some families in Litomyšl began to declare themselves Germans. German soldiers would cook Eintopf in a cauldron in the square and called out: 'Come have som lovely soup!' My parents always said, 'Don't you ever go there!' I never tasted it. But the children who joined the Germans were there with their ewers and they had to eat the soup. Since they were in the Schülerheim, they had to promote it."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Svitavy, 03.05.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:47:01
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Svitavy, 11.05.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:36:31
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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The war took her childhood away. She was no longer allowed to play with Jewish children

The witness in the middle, with sister Růžena (left), Marie Benešová (right) and Stanislav Vaňous (bottom), Litomyšl, 1939
The witness in the middle, with sister Růžena (left), Marie Benešová (right) and Stanislav Vaňous (bottom), Litomyšl, 1939
zdroj: Witness's archive

Milada Kocourková, née Fukarová, was born in Litomyšl on 18 February 1930. Her mother was a seamstress, her father a tailor, and she had five siblings. From an early age, she encountered Sudeten Germans from the surrounding villages and she could speak German as a child. Jewish family, the Eisners, lived in the neighbouring villa and she played with their children as a child, but during the war they were no longer allowed to meet. At Christmas, her mother secretly sent her to them with apples. Her eldest brother was deployed on forced labour in Germany. After the factory in Halle an der Saale had been bombed, the family thought he was dead. German gendarmes came to them looking for her brother. Having finished her schooling in 1944, she joined the German Papouschek family in Litomyšl. At the end of the war she had to go with them to Salzburg. At the end of 1945 she moved to Svitavy with her parents. She worked in a textile factory with Sudeten German women who were waiting to be deported. Like her father, she joined the Communist Party. After the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968, she interpreted for the wives of Soviet officers who lived in the barracks in Květná near Polička. She had two children with her first husband. After his death, she married the former Czechoslovak ambassador Vladimír Ludvík. She was living in her family house in Svitavy in 2023.