“There was a blackout. There was a death penalty for owning a radio. You had to hand in radios during the German government. The person was executed, when he or she had kept the radio and when they (Germans – trans.) found out about it. However, we hid a radio and listened to it at home.”
“Recruiting groups came to persuade people. Farmers were against it. A farmer even confronted them with a pitchfork and banished them from his house. They fought. They took the cows and cattle to the barns. They united everything.”
“Three women came to see us and wanted to talk to us. They said that they had been sent to hand us some documents concerning the nationalization of the company. It made my husband angry. And he said: 'Get out of my house!’ They told him not to get angry that it was not their fault that it was the resolution on nationalization. He opposed them. That is why they had to call the State Security. I do not want to say that he faced them holding a gun. He was a hunter, so he had two guns. He opposed them. That is why they had to call the State Security. They took him home and called a doctor. The doctor had to give him an injection to calm him down. After that, everyone left. Nothing else happened because it was tragic.”
“My older sisters before they went to school, used to take baked goods to the store and to restaurants where they needed them. When I was in the second grade, I used to take fresh baked goods to the castle so they could have them for breakfast. The castle was close to our home.”
“There was also a bombing over our village. One family died, and the German army shot twenty-eight paratroopers down over our village. After the war, their bodies were exhumed and transported to France. I remember when the American paratrooper squadron flew over that village and the Germans were waiting for them and shot them down on those parachutes. Twenty-eight American pilots and they buried them behind the cemetery.”
Blažena Strachotová, née Fibichová was born on 9 February 1917 in Slavičín in South Moravia to a family of a farmer and baker Rudolf Fibich. The bakery business was inherited by the Fibich family for generations. His mother Františka Fibichová was a stay-at-home spouse and helped in the bakery. In the 1930s, Blažena Strachotová trained to be a meat and sausage sale assistant in Valašské Meziřící. She got married to Jaroslav Strachota whose family owned a Soft Drink Factory in 1939. In 1945, she witnessed an air battle over Slavičín during which 28 American pilots died and were buried in a mass grave behind the local church. Blažena Strachotová and her husband lead the Soft Drink Factory until 1950 when their business was nationalized under dramatic circumstances. Until the last moment, neither the Strachots nor their friends among the small tradesmen believed that small businesses and family trades could be subject to the ongoing nationalisation. When the business was nationalised, they had to leave the apartment they had in the Soft Drink Factory area. They later left Slavičín for good. Blažena Strachotová followed her husband to Ostrava where they worked together for the Ingstav company as a driver and a driver‘s assistant. They lived in Ostrava in extremely poor conditions in a lodging house for two years. The Strachots had two sons, Jan, and Jaroslav. Both sons had a more difficult path to study at universities due to their bourgeois origin. In 1977, Mr. Strachot and Mrs. Strachotová moved to České Budějovice so that they could be closer to their son Jaroslav in the period of old age and because of worsening health. Witness´s husband died on 9 November of the same year. Blažena Strachotová was the oldest citizen of the town of České Budějovice at the time of the interview (2022).
Friends of Blažena Strachotová and self-employed people in Slavičín wearing Sokol uniforms; from the left František Maláník (haulier), František Trčálek (blacksmith), Josef Málek (farmer and neuterer), Ludvík Malíček (farmer and wheelwright), Karel Vystrčil (teacher), Rudolf Jurek (owner of sof drinks company), Arnošt Zdráhal (painter), Josef Kobělský
Friends of Blažena Strachotová and self-employed people in Slavičín wearing Sokol uniforms; from the left František Maláník (haulier), František Trčálek (blacksmith), Josef Málek (farmer and neuterer), Ludvík Malíček (farmer and wheelwright), Karel Vystrčil (teacher), Rudolf Jurek (owner of sof drinks company), Arnošt Zdráhal (painter), Josef Kobělský
