“As a shopkeeper, of course... when the partisan group was being established, they looked for people who would help them with supplies of weapons, and with getting food and clothes. Well and it was his turn with food as he was a shopkeeper. He usually supplied them with cigarettes, rolls and salamis and also a Mr. Tošenovský, a baker who lived in Dolní Bečva helped him. Well and that is how they helped. They supplied the whole resistance group with food. He and my mum carried it to them in rucksacks at night. They went there as lovers as they were not married at that time. They went there as lovers. With rucksacks but if they had met Germans or guard or [if they had seen] anything suspicious at night, they would have thrown the rucksacks away to a ditch and they would have carried on walking as if nothing had been happening. They carried it to a forest, it was called Haša´s grove there, it was basically partisan checkpoint. They had a pillbox there where they were hiding and all the events that they planned usually happened there.”
“It was a double chimney. But only one half was used for heating, the second half was hidden skilfully. It was a small place and you could get inside and you could stay there for a while, I of course mean stay there standing before the danger was over. The old houses used to have places like this. For example, there was something similar by the chimney in his shop at Mr. Párek´s and fabrics were hidden there.”
“We sold everything we had at home. We ate potatoes, eggs, and milk at home. I still remember that when I was a child and my mum went to milk a cow, I was waiting with a mug by the door of the cowshed. She poured me warm milk that still had foam on it and I drank it and I was thriving thanks to it. We sold all the meat. We ate meat only on Sundays and we only boiled it because we also used it to make a soup. Anyway, we sold everything that we could sell.”
Oldřiška Mikundová-Bártková was born on 6 May 1945 in Horní Bečva. Her parents Marie Mikulcová and Oldřich Šimurda got involved in helping partisans during last war years. They supplied them with food that they carried them to a pre-arranged place in the forest. However, Oldřich Šimurda was revealed during November 1944, arrested, and subsequently hanged as a deterrent on an electricity pole. Not only that Oldřiška grew up without her father but because of the fact that her parents were not legally married, her family had problems receiving compensation and orphan‘s pension after the war. After the elementary school, Oldřiška started to study at Secondary Agriculture Technical School in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. However, after two years of studying, she decided that she wanted to earn her own living and she requested to interrupt her studies. She started to work in Tesla company in Rožnov in the Department of Quality Management. When Oldřiška was thirty years old, she became a deputy for the Czech National Social Party. She alternatively worked in Tesla and commuted to Prague to the Department of Social Affairs. During her political career which lasted until 1990, she helped a lot of students who were not allowed be admitted to a secondary school or a university for example for their religious beliefs. In 2007, she got married to Jaroslav Bártka a man who got to know her executed father Oldřich Šimurda as an eighteen-year-old partisan.
Nazis executed Oldřich Šimurda on an electricity pole next to the grocery shop that he run, they left his body hang there for two days as a deterrent for others who would want to get involved in helping partisans
Nazis executed Oldřich Šimurda on an electricity pole next to the grocery shop that he run, they left his body hang there for two days as a deterrent for others who would want to get involved in helping partisans
Old family house in Prostřední Bečva where the father had the hiding place built in a chimney - a new house was built in its place after long negotiations with National Heritage Institute and it has been standing there ever since
Old family house in Prostřední Bečva where the father had the hiding place built in a chimney - a new house was built in its place after long negotiations with National Heritage Institute and it has been standing there ever since
Fallen heroes memorial plaque was placed in Prostřední Bečva after the war, one of the heroes is Oldřich Šimunda - witness´s father who was without trial executed by Gestapo for helping partisans
Fallen heroes memorial plaque was placed in Prostřední Bečva after the war, one of the heroes is Oldřich Šimunda - witness´s father who was without trial executed by Gestapo for helping partisans
