Milena Uhlíková

* 1929

  • „There was a certain man named Mantz, a director, an SS man, he walked in those pants, boots... Well, a real SS man. And he had a dachshund, a beautiful dachshund. And he walked around the factory with the whip on his horse and oversaw everything. I know that once we were chatting with a former classmate in a corridor somewhere and he whipped her with that whip. He missed me, he beat her. What are we doing there?! Raus! Told us to go work. And that was the only thing, and then I met this guy just before I gave up on it. I went there with the request for him to allow us to come in later, after February, that it was early, that we were walking such a distance and that it was terrible. And I remember that I gave him the paper in German and I stood there like during an interrogation at his table and I looked into his eyes, so fearlessly and with desire. And he also looked at me like that and then said: Du hast schöne Augen! Boom, he gave me a stamp and I left.“

  • „It was my tenth birthday when Hitler occupied us. The weather was terrible, it was snowing, it was raining, well, terrible. All of us at that time, us children, we watched like crazy, we didn't understand, we didn't know what was happening, but everyone, the whole barracks and the street, everything was crying. We didn't know if they were going to bomb us or what. It made us all feel awful. Then they took us. I say, there was a decent house, only lawyers, freeholders lived there... I tell you, the Jews also lived there, so I lost a friend from there. Some relatives from Romania asked about them after the war. We said, unfortunately, they didn't come back, nobody knows anything about them. She was a year older than me, she drew wonderfully, Adéla...“

  • „In the morning of 1968, I woke up at night because they were flying over Smíchov, at three o'clock in the morning. I say Jesus Christ... So I immediately called Jarda, that friend who is in Switzerland, they lived not far from us there in Nikolajka. I say, Jardo, open your window and listen, there are fucking Russians here. What are you talking about? You're drunk, aren't you? I say, I am not, listen to how we are occupied under the Germans. In the morning we were at work at six or seven already, even though we usually went to work at eight, we didn't have any time punch clocks there. It was quite benevolent there, because we had to do it anyway. Or suddenly someone came there, an individual or the delegation or whoever, so we had to stay there to write what was needed right away, to bring the coffee and so on. So we were almost all there in Lobkowicz Palace early in the morning. When I went to work, no trams were running, when I went from Smíchov past the Štefánik barracks, down there near Kinsky, there was already a group of the Red Army, tanks everywhere, all the fucking Russians were there.“

  • „I didn't know that aunt in America. The Viennese aunt, yes, we went there while she was alive, when they opened the borders, so we went to see her in Vienna about two or three times a year, but the American one... I was able to go there in 1948 after the war, but I got married at forty-nine. Before that, when I met Uhlík, we could go there, but he came from the military and they didn't let soldiers in, he had to wait for about three years after the military before he could travel. At that time, my aunt sent me some papers that she would pay for everything, like the trip, that it would not cost anyone anything. It's just that they didn't let me go. I wanted to get married right then, but they said it wasn’t possible, so we didn't go anywhere.“

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha, 29.09.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 02:40:42
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Praha, 15.11.2019

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    délka: 01:02:51
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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I told them that I will never be in the party because they say something else and do something else

Milena Válová at sixteen years old
Milena Válová at sixteen years old
zdroj: witness's archive

Milena Uhlíková, née Válová, was born on March 15, 1929 in Prague. Her father Antonín had a small construction company, her mother Anna worked as a housekeeper in the house in which they lived in in Smíchov. Milena completed her primary education in Smíchov and also went to the family school there. When she celebrated her tenth birthday, German soldiers occupied the country. During the war, her mother kept geese and rabbits in the cellar, and relatives from the countryside also helped them out. In the winter of 1945, Milena was deployed to Rupa Modřany, where she issued materials to the workers in the warehouse. She experienced the bombing of Prague in February 1945, the Prague Uprising and the liberation by the Red Army. After finishing the family school in 1946, she joined Tatra Smíchov, where she worked until 1955. In 1949, she married Vladimír Uhlík, divorced twenty-six years later, she is childless. Between 1955 and 1965 she was alternately at home on sick leave and in the meantime she worked at the Smíchov branch of Zbrojovka Brno, at the Ministry of Construction and various part-time jobs. Although she despised communists and made her opinion known to them, thanks to an acquaintance she managed to get a position as a secretary at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1965. In August 1968, she travelled to Austria with her mother and husband. Two weeks after their return, occupation troops arrived in the country. At the end of 1969, she resigned from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and from 1970 she worked at the company IPS (Engineering and Industrial Construction) in Prague. In November 1989, she participated in the Letná demonstrations. After the revolution, she tried to travel as long as her health allowed. In 2019, she lived with her partner in Vinohrady, Prague.