Markéta Šonková

* 1936

  • "[The German teacher] sat me down with Marta. Marta was German. Her father was the head of the Gestapo in Olešnice It was the same. She would wait for me. Nobody was friends with her, you know, because they feared her. They feared visiting her since her father was with the Gestapo... None of the children were friends with her. Poor thing, she would always wait for me down by the door. When I came down, I wanted to run away but couldn't. She grabbed my hand and pulled me towards them. I had to play with her. But I had a good time there, the lady was kind."

  • "The teacher was a pest, a German. She wore the cross. She was with the SA, you know. Terrible. She wore... I still remember her. Blond, big bun, black skirt and black coat. I've hated the color black ever since because I always see that pest wearing it. When I came to school in the morning, she said, 'Heil Hitler! I didn't say 'Heil Hitler!' because I didn't know how. She always took me by the collar and hit the blackboard with me. I was all bruised up. My grandmother couldn't do anything. If she tried, they would take me away for correction."

  • "Grandma reported six hens. We had seven. Rabbits - we could only have one female, you know, to feed us. See, the Gestapo used to come to the village and go from one house to the next with the mayor. They checked what people had reported and registered. Us children always ran home and shouted: 'The Gestapo has arrived!' We had dug a hole and we always put the chickens in sacks in there and covered them with brushwood to hide them. We were just afraid that the rooster would crow."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Horní Stropnice, 09.06.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:09:00
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Horní Stropnice, 03.04.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:26:45
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I was a love child

Markéta Šonková, 1960s
Markéta Šonková, 1960s
zdroj: Post Bellum

Markéta Šonková, nee Schimánková, was born in Prague at St Apollinaire Hospital on 4 October 1936 to Anežka Dumcová, nee Schimánková, as love child. Her parents never married and her mother did not even list her father‘s name in her birth certificate. She had German nationality from her mother. She spent the first three months of her life with her mother and then was given to a foster family in Buková in southern Bohemia. Her mother commuted to see her and they kept in touch throughout their lives. Her foster parents, Václav and Marie Janečeks, had a small farm that supported the family. Together with her, the Janecek family cared for seven other children. Her foster parents raised her in faith in God. During the war, several of her half-siblings were on total deployment. Markéta Šonková entered the German school in Olešnice in 1942. She experienced the end of the war in Čečovice. After the war, she and her mother were threatened with deportation to Germany as German citizens, which fortunately did not materialise. In 1946, the witness went to a Czech school in Horní Stropnice. After school she was very keen to become a cook. However, the state needed labour in the factories, so instead of apprenticing as a cook, she started to apprentice as a spinner. For a short time after her apprenticeship she worked in a textile factory in Jindřichův Hradec. When her foster mother became seriously ill, she was released from her job and returned home to Buková. In the early 1950s she managed to find a job as a cook‘s helper. From then until retirement she worked as a cook in various establishments. In 2024, Markéta Šonková lived in the Home for the Elderly in Dobrá Voda.