Klára Křehlíková

* 1928

  • "We always had to take the pig to someone. Either somewhere on the farm or with someone who had the opportunity to breed the pig. We used to take a pot there every day, a laundry big pot of food. That was potatoes mashed with some of those groats. We always used to bring that hot in the winter on the sledge. I guess we always had it over the winter, because I remember we used to sled it. There was a farm behind the courthouse. Where the houses are now, there were barns. So, there was a farmhouse on Žižkova Street. Dad had a lot of friends, so somebody always breed that pig for him." - "Now that's an interesting story." - "I've been to the slaughterhouse with it. I went through the whole thing. I brough the killed pig." - "Where did they kill it? At the slaughterhouse?" - "No. Someone brought it there alive, then I took it home dead. I had to go with him all the way... I saw them do it from the beginning. How they killed him, how they knocked him out. We hit him this way. Then they skinned the skin, it had to be given to the Germans, because they were making leather for the army for boots. So, they didn't give us the leather. And then what else? Then they made half of it - like this, they gutted it, they gave me the intestines. I brought that home and the butcher came and, in our house, there in the kitchen we made a slaughter."

  • "And we had to get up in the morning in the dark. We could only wash in the barn. There was water from the tap and we had to wash there. And we went to the hop yard in the dark, that was far. We couldn't even go anywhere... We had food stamps and money with us from home, but we couldn't buy anything because when we went it was still dark and everything was closed. We came to the hop farm and they wouldn't let us go anywhere for the whole day. In the evening, we went out of the hop farm and everything was closed again. So, we were really hungry there. They gave us some unsweetened coffee substitute in the morning from skim milk, because there was no sugar, it was on the stamps, they didn't give us that. At noon we were given water and in that they boiled some potatoes, they called it potato soup. It was unsalty so we wouldn't be thirsty. To drink, they gave us a jug of water with vinegar for the whole day, and in the evening, they gave us some of that coffee again, which we poured out at first, but then we were hungry, so we drank it anyway, because we were downright hungry. That's how they kept us there."

  • "Because dad was very well known, all those cops knew him, they belonged to the city. We used to go to see him at the town office, too. So, dad had a lot of acquaintances. I liked to go for walks with dad, he used to take me to town. We used to go to these - it was Klein and Bergmann, the name of the store. It was a big toy store. Dad knew them well. They used to let me at the cash register there, I always liked to sell. Well, they used to let me sell there. And even when old Mrs. Bergmann died, dad took me to the funeral. That was the first Jewish funeral I ever saw. In Boleslav, there's a famous Jewish cemetery. Dad took me to that funeral of Mrs. Bergmann. I was amazed that the funeral was so simple. No flowers - that they put stones there, not flowers. So, I asked dad about it, and he said, 'Well, wait until we go out, you'll see.' Indeed, when we went out, there was an attendant standing there with a big tray. People were throwing hundreds of crowns, big money. He already had a whole pile. And dad said: 'See, so instead of them doing an expensive funeral like you knew.' We lived near the cemetery. Those funerals were so big and with music. So, there it was this simple, even the coffin was simple. There was just a blanket thrown over it. And they took that off and the coffin of Mrs. Bergmann... it was just a plain [coffin]. It was really a chest. And they contributed like that. That they give to the poor and support the other Jews. That was the last funeral back in the First Republic."

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    V Praze, 21.03.2021

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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We have learned to be silent

Period portrait of a witness, Prague, 1945
Period portrait of a witness, Prague, 1945
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Klára Křehlíková was born as Klára Vylítová on 16 March 1928 in Mladá Boleslav. Her mother, Pavla, was born into a Czech family in Vienna, which moved to Chotoviny in southern Bohemia after the First World War. Her mother married František Vylít. They moved to Mladá Boleslav, where they had four children, Klára was the third. During the Protectorate, the universities were closed and Klára, also for health reasons, enrolled in the family school after graduating from the primary school. After the war, she continued at a one-year vocational school and, after arriving in Prague, at a two-year school for dietary nurses. During the war, at the age of 14, she had to join the forced hop voluntary job, experienced total deployment and the bombing of Mladá Boleslav by the Soviet army on 9 May 1945. In 1947-1949 she studied at the Higher School of Practical Dietetics in Prague. In 1950, her father, František Vylít, died of a heart attack, having previously faced pressure to join the Communist Party. After her marriage to MUDr. Aleš Křehlík, she lived in Prague and devoted her entire professional life, 36 years, to working at the Lung Hospital in Veleslavín as a dietary nurse. She experienced this famous hospital at the time when it was still fully functional, today the building is abandoned and dilapidated.