“The years went by and it was 1939. The war started. We were in school. Mum ran to get us because Cossacks arrived, they had horses and were shooting, even though it was only into the air and not people yet. So she picked us up from school and we were home. Dad wasn’t home at that time, he was in Khust for cattle but he didn’t bring any, didn’t buy any, because the war had started there and there were shootings so he was hidden under a truck until the shooting stopped. We only met in the evening and the whole family was back together again.”
“They were locked up in Bory in Pilsen. Dad was assigned to the kitchen as a butcher and he cooked there. Everything was rationed but if he put a bit more water into the soup nothing happened, for so many prisoners… And if he gave a bit more to Jára, Jára would get kicked and his teeth knocked out and he’d spend a week in solitary confinement. Because he took it and ate it. And I wanted to bring him a package, I was allowed to visit, but because he was in solitary confinement and hadn’t told anyone, only when we got there with grandmother and the kids were we told that he was in solitary confinement. I wanted to at least leave the package there for him but they said no to everything. So we went back home, with the package and the kids.”
“When Jára came home, that was interesting, the boy recognised him – from a picture. But the girl didn’t. I told her: “Mařenka, go to Dad.” And she says: “I don’t know this man.” She was scared. Jára started shedding tears when the girl hid behind me and didn’t want to go to him. I said: “Come on, it’s Dad.” He opened his arms and she looked at me, I handed her to him and she was still scared… Then she gave him a kiss on the forehead and after that it was all fine.”
Marie Melicharová, née Strouhalová, was born on the 24th of December 1924 in Královo nad Tisou (today‘s Korolevo) in Carpathian Ruthenia into a mixed Hungarian-Czech family. Her father, a butcher named Jan Strouhal, came from Ptení in the Prostějov region, while her mother Maria Čorbo was from Budapest. At the beginning of the 1920s they both settled in Carpathian Ruthenia. Being part of the repatriation of Czechoslovak citizens, the family returned to Bohemia in 1939 to a new home in Tišnov u Brna. After the war Marie married Jaroslav Melichar in 1945 who, just like the Marie‘s parents, ran a butcher‘s shop. They had two children. Their happy work and family life was, however, short-lived. In autumn 1949, Marie‘s husband Jaroslav Melichar, her father Jan Strouhal, and sister-in-law Milada Petříková were all arrested for suspected participation in a resistance movement. It seems they played a minor role in the nowadays known resistance group of Bohuslav Havlín. During a manipulated trial they all received sentences of ten years in prisons in Jáchymov and other facilities. For the next six years, Marie and her two children had to suffer through various degrees of oppression from the communist regime - from having her property nationalized to being pressured to divorce her imprisoned husband. The family reunited in 1955 when her husband was released due to good behaviour. Marie Melicharová passed away on January, teh 12th, 2023.
