„Did you go to church? What way were you raised?” “The church was far away, so we didn’t go there much. We only went there when we wanted to see each other – girls, boys, just to see each other. We weren’t interested in religion. It was a mistake but we were little. Then I went to Luck. For the summer holidays, I came back to help my parents. We worked on the fields or we were picking fruits from trees. Whatever had to be done. Then the Germans came in 1943 and wanted to take us away for forced labor in the Reich. My parents took me away from school and I stayed at home. When the Russians drove out the Germans, they came with the Czechoslovak army and Colonel Svoboda. One officer came to us, his name was Mesner, I think he was a Captain; he dated my friend, Lidka Réblová, the teacher’s daughter. They were visiting the families in the village and Liduška asked me: ‘Are you gonna join the army as well?’ She was dressed in a uniform, wearing a white shirt and a tie. I loved it and so I said: ‘Yes’. My mom said: ‘You’re not going anywhere!’ I started to cry and I always got my way by crying (laughter).”
“The Germans came, and when the war began between the Germans and the Russians and the Germans went through us [Czechoslovakia], my parents took me out of school. It was rumoured that the Germans would go to schools and take the students from them, specifically the years 1925, 1926, and take them to work in Germany. Because we had a farm, I was listed as employed by my parents on the farm.”
“War was terrible. Every time we moved our positions, we saw corpses, dead horses, wrecked carts and artillery guns scattered all around. They simply dragged it aside to make space for us to move. It was piles of dead. We cried and cried when we saw what was going on there. When we saw this mayhem, we finally understood that it was no fun.”
"One officer came to us, his name was Mesner, I think he was a Captain; he dated my friend, Lidka Réblová, the teacher’s daughter. They were visiting the families in the village and Liduška asked me: ‘Are you gonna join the army as well?’ She was dressed in a uniform, wearing a white shirt and a tie. I loved it and so I said: ‘Yes’. My mom said: ‘You’re not going anywhere!’ I started to cry and I always got my way by crying (laughter).”
Emilie Řepíková was born on 16 May, 1925, in the village of Malovaná, district of Dubno in Volhynia. She went to an elementary school in Luck. In 1943, the Nazis wanted her and her class mates to become slave laborers in the Reich. Eventually, she evaded forced labor, because her parents took her off the school. A year later, the Czechoslovak and the Red Army came to the region and were recruiting soldiers. At age 16, she and a friend of her were recruited into the Czechoslovak army in spite of her mother’s strong and painful disapproval. Her father and her fiancée were already serving in the army. She worked in the rear, distributing clothes to the soldiers. She proceeded with the army till the Dukla pass. She remembers great chaos reigning in the army corps, their storehouse was moved back and forth. She was seeing her fiancée Josef Řepík in the evenings. They married shortly after the war. During the war, her later husband served as a liaison officer between the Czechoslovak army and the Red Army. After the war, he worked at the ministry of defense as a high-level officer. He didn’t talk to his wife about his job and when she inquired he replied: “You better don’t want to know”. She didn’t think strongly about the events of the fifties, the Stalinist purges. She approved of the regime and more or less believed the Communist propaganda. She and her husband disapproved of the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, but they were forced to change their minds. They had to leave for Moscow where her husband became the Czechoslovak envoy to the Commonwealth of Warsaw Treaty Countries. In Moscow, they led a great life as diplomats. They had their own stores, a lot of money and a nice residence. She claims that she was helping the locals by shopping for them in the diplomat stores. She was able to supply them with goods that weren’t available anywhere else. They weren’t excited by the Velvet revolution and the fall of the Iron Curtain. She is dissatisfied with the developments after 1989. Emilie Řepíková passed away on February, the 8th, 2024.
