Milada Nováková

* 1936

  • "We were those victims of the 17th April of 1945 after that unfortunate air raid aimed at the railway station. They were dropping the bombs when they flew over Švabiny and other places and one of the bombs fell to the neighbours' well. Some were larger, some were smaller. In the forest, when you go to Špídrholec, there are still many holes. This bomb was some sort of enhanced. It fell to the well and destroyed all houses around."

  • "The Communist party pressured us into commenting it. That time, I got really angry. How can I comment something when I have no idea what is it about? First, I need to know what it is and then I can express my opinion. Nobody could force me to sign or say that these are the good ones and those are bad. There was a bit of trouble but then it settled down."

  • "Every day, we went to check the rubble to dig things out. The digging was gradual and there were finds. We would find broken things but many of them were undamaged and we were happy that they were in one piece. We rejoiced over little things, one could say that it was a bit dumb, but we had what we had."

  • "It was the seventeenth and grandma ran outside to the garden to look around as she was used to. The sky was set alight. I don't know whether it was the strips of aluminium foil they would throw out of the airplanes. When the searchlights were aimed at them, they shone and glittered. Maybe the light was caused by some projectiles. Granny stormed to the house and shouted: 'Hide, quickly, hide, quickly! It's bad!' We went to the cellar and then it started falling. There was crumbling I could hear, it was terrible. They were guarding me. Aunt wrapped me in a feather duvet. I was eight and half years old. She covered me with the duvet. When it exploded and started clamouring, she lay on top of me. The aunt was quite hefty and she lay on me. There was a happy end to it. Had the house collapsed on us, I would be the only dead under the duvet because I would suffocate. When the clamour, smoke and dust was gone, it was so quiet. It was early in the morning and nothing more happened after."

  • "During the war, it was pretty difficult. I remember how grandma used to go for the so-called šamon. It meant that she would travel to surrounding villages, she took whatever was not needed at home, took it to the countryside and brought food in exchange. Grandma was small and a bit stocky. She came home and unpacked herself. She had a package of butter on her chest, a loaf of bread on her stomach and some small things in her pockets, too."

  • „Pro mne to nebyl hezký rok. Měla jsem jít brzo do důchodu, ale to s tím nesouviselo. V knihovně byla čistka. Bylo to podobné, jako když se měnily režimy po roce 1968. Když se měnilo vedení, platilo: Nové koště dobře mete. Co je staré, je staré a pryč s tím a všechno to je špatné. To není pravda. Nemůže se jezdit z kouta do kouta a od příkopu k příkopu. Ne všechno, co je staré, je špatné. Vztahy v knihovně nebyly dobré. Nebyli na mě hodní, ale byli oškliví.“ It was not a good year for me. I was to be pensioned soon but that was not the reason. There was a... in the library. It was similar to the change of situation in 1986. When the management changed, there was one rule: ... what is old is old and away with it and all of it is bad. That is not true. One can't go from wall to wall and from curb to curb. Not everything what is old is bad. The relationships in the library were not good. They were not nice to me but they were mean.

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    v Plzni, 11.02.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 01:59:55
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
  • 2

    v Plzni, 17.02.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 47:13
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Until today, I am scared whenever I hear an airplane

Milada Nováková in 1955, high school graduation photograph
Milada Nováková in 1955, high school graduation photograph
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice.

Milada Nováková was born on the 16th September in 1936 in Plzeň as a daughter of a shop assistant Ladislav Světelský and Julie Barborková-Světelská. A year after, the family moved to Prague for work reasons. Witness‘ mother suffered from a grave disease to which she succumbed in December 1943. Her father agreed that Milada be adopted by her uncle and aunt Löschl from Plzeň and she changed her surname to Löschl. On the 17th of April, 1945, during a British air force nighttime air raid aimed at the marshalling yard, a bomb fell near their house. Milada and her family were buried by the rubble in the cellar. They were saved by relatives living nearby. For two months, the Löschl family lived in improvised conditions at their uncle Hajsman. Liberation of PPP left a sweet memory of chocolate and candy which Milada used to get from the American soldiers. She helped her adoptive parents with sorting out the rubble and building a new house. She attended basic school at a school at Chodské Square. In 1947, she started to study at an eight-year high school [age 10 -18] at Mikulášské Square. After the school reform in 1948, she had to transfer to so-called eleven-year school [which were, in fact, three years of secondary education and eight years of basic school in one] in Doubravka. She graduated from high school in 1955 and pursued further education at the two-year Higher School for Education. In 1964, she married Jiří Novák and in the following two years, their daughter Bohumila and son Ondřej were born. In 1964, she started to work as an assistant of Associate Professor Rádl at the department of technical education at the Faculty of Education in Plzeň. She was tormented by the events that followed the August 1968 occupation. She was afraid for her children. In the years 1973 – 1975, she took evening courses at the Evening University of Marxism-Leninism (Večerní univerzita marxismu–leninismu, VUML). In 1976, she started working as a librarian in the children‘s section in the municipal library. She was active in the workplace organisation of the Revolutionary Unions Movement (Revoluční odborové hnutí, ROH) In January 1977, she refused to sign the Anticharter. She was travelling in the Soviet Union when the Chernobyl nuclear disaster happened. In 1989, she did not participate in politics in any way. After the Revolution, she was declared an “old structure” and allegedly, her colleagues bullied her. She retired on the 1st of January in 1992. As a retiree, she spent her time caring for her family and taking courses at the School of Lifelong Learning. At the time of recording (2020), she lived in her house with her husband and their daughter.