To this day I can see those pictures of Stalin on the fence, how blood dripped from his hands
Vlasta Šafránková, née Bernatíková, was born on the 30th of January 1928 in Slezská Ostrava. In the first half of the 30s her parents moved to Petřvald with her, where she started attending the first grade. After the Munich Agreement, Poland annexed parts of the eastern Těšínsko area, including Petřvald, and Vlasta had to transition to a Polish school. Shortly thereafter, after the Nazi occupation, a new transition had to be made, this time to a German school. During the war her father was involved in resistance activity and her future husband Vladimír Šafránek was forcefully conscripted into the Wehrmacht. After the war Vlasta moved to Ostrava for work, where she also experienced the 1948 February coup. In the year 1951 the communists sentenced her cousin Josef Uhlář to fifteen years of hard labor; he had been a member of the anti-communist resistance group of Hora Hostýnská. During the 50s she worked as a caretaker in the iron refineries in Bohumín, since the 60s at Československé státní dráhy (ČSD - Czechoslovak State Railways) in the station Karviná-město. Thanks to her work engagement at ČSD she repeatedly looked toward the West before the year 1989. Due to health issues she retired to a disability retirement in the year 1983. She experienced the Velvet Revolution in Bohumín, where she also lived at the time the interview was recorded (2021).