“The worst thing was when I was at the grammar school and the occupation took place; one professor came in. He entered it, stood there, bowed, and said: ‘Children, always love your country.’ And he went and just held his head, and we were all just completely... even now when I say it, I still get the shivers when I remember him.”
“When I was at school, my classmate and I would walk to school past a factory where they made ammunition or something. So I remember how one time they flew by and bombed it. And because I was going from Bílany to Kroměříž... we’d go along a footpath between the fields - so we hid in a ditch like this. Nothing pleasant.”
“I met my husband in 1945, and we were married in 46 because we heard the government’s call at the time for people to move to the border regions here. So the first year I went to Zlaté Hory, Ondřejovice - Salisov, which is where my son was born. That year I taught in Supíkovice. I had to commute there by train and then on foot another three kilometres at least across the fields to teach at the school there. The winter of 46 was uncommonly harsh, with a lot of snow, and often enough the headmistress would tell me: ‘Don’t come here, stay at home.’ And I’d set off again the next day anyway. It took its toll on the health, on the baby, my son, he had dysentery when he was born.”
Albína Kratochvílová was born in 1925 in Kostelany near Kroměříž. Her father was a teacher and headmaster, her mother was a housewife. She attended a grammar school and teachers‘ institute in Kroměříž, where she also experienced war-time bombing raids. After the war she and her husband responded to the government‘s call to re-settle the border regions - they moved to Jeseníky (also known as the Eastern Sudetes or the High Ash Mountains - trans.). She witnessed the deportation of the German inhabitants and the arrival of Greek immigrants. She worked as a teacher from 1945 to 1980.
