"I know there was this thermometer and one of my colleagues was hiding there, so he peeked out and they shot him. I, I was at home when I heard the shooting, so I didn't go anywhere, that's about it."
"Then I walked across the field to Chvalenice to the other grandmother's house and they had about three officers staying there. Well, I know my grandmother said that one of them was from Saint Antonio, Texas, and he always came to milk her cows. He was from the farm. And I know that if I misspoke and said chewing gum, yeah chewing gum, he gave me a whole pack of gum. Well, and then there in the village they would take out the food that they brought in, chickens and I don't know, bananas, well just piles of food, and you know, when people saw that, it was terrible."
"I had a little toy case and I used to take it on the train with my folks and I used to carry meat in it, because the Germans didn't think I had anything in it at the station, they thought I had toys in it. So I know we always talked about it. We used to joke about it. There were all sorts of checks. And there was a story next door in Chlum. Imagine that in '44, when the war was almost over, the Germans raided there and they found Mr. Bečvář had killed a pig on the sly. That was forbidden. So somehow our gendarme agreed with the chief German here that they wouldn't do anything about it. But there was a man called Kaštánek, a zealous man, who went to the Gestapo. And they took Mr. Bečvář to Prague and the next year, at the beginning of March or so, they killed him. I'm surprised he had two boys and that they didn't kill this Kaštánek."
Ctibor Štádler was born on 30 July 1936 in Prague. He grew up in Karlín, but they often went to his grandparents in Střížovice, where they also brought food. Towards the end of the war the family moved to Střížovice and was there during the liberation by the American army. After the war they moved to Prague for a few years and later to Pilsen. Ctibor went to college in Liberec, where he was also there during the occupation in August 1968, which was very bloody. He accepted the offer to join the party and was able to travel around Western Europe. In 1973 he and his wife moved to Pilsen, where their son was born. Ctibor Štádler died on 17 February 2024.
