“Part of the year 1945 we did not attend school since we were carrying out forced labor. We got back together in May after the liberation. We ended up going to school over the summer and in September we graduated. Report cards had to be signed by a school inspector in Prague. Therefore our teacher took our report cards by train to the capital to have them signed. He returned by train to the Nový Bydžov train station where we waited for the report cards. This was the last day of September, and the following day we traveled to Prague to enroll at the university. That was my last year of gymnasium.”
“Back in the day patients received care not only in the doctors’ offices but also in the doctors’ homes. So people would visit us at our apartment the whole week. This service began on Saturday after office hours. We put up a sign informing patients whose service it was any given week. So when it was my turn, patients visited me at home and I had two children. What was even worse, we had a telephone installed because we were “privileged” (most people waited for years for a land line). I also made house calls because my patients did not have cars. They were also in the nearby villages, my district included five villages and solitaire houses in the surrounding countryside. All my out of town patients lived uphill from Napajedla and they were such steep hills so I had to go by foot with my doctor’s bag half hour or more since the ambulance could not drive up there. So I left the kids home alone. I also walked from where we lived to the other end of town. My children slept at home, or were awake.“
“After 1948 our family business was nationalized and dad had to go to work as a laborer in a foundry near where we lived. It was a major problem for him since he was not used to manual work and he was past fifty years of age. My mom lost her leg above the knee to cancer. She learned to walk with a prosthetic leg and went to work every day regardless of her handicapp. She worked in a collective of disabled people manufacturing rubber seals and other small components for many different products.“
.“When I was in 7th grade, the Germans arrived in Nový Bydžov. It was March 16 and it was an ugly and unpleasant day. It was raining with the snow on the ground. They arrived from the north and passed our house. They were on motorcycles. The Germans were closing in on the town square and the tobacconist, who also sold newspapers, was angry and said that this cannot be possible since there’s no mention of it in the daily press.”
Dagmar Urbánková, nee Peřinová, was born into a family of a merchant with iron goods in Nový Bydžov. Dagmar Urbánková recalls the German occupation from 1939 to 1945. During her last year of gymnasium she was conscripted into forced labor at a sugar mill. After her belated graduation in 1945, she attended Faculty of Medicine, Charles University in Prague. In February 1948 she participated in anticommunist student demonstrations in support of (President) Edvard Beneš. After the communist coup, the family business in Nový Bydžov was nationalized. Her father worked in a foundry as a laborer. After Dagmar Peřinová graduated from Charles University in 1950, she married Vladimír Urbánek, a doctor. Shortly after their wedding Urbánek began his two-year mandatory military service that were followed by an additional three-year service as an army doctor. Dagmar Urbánková worked in the pediatric department of the Zlín (formerly Gottwaldov) hospital. In 1954 she became the first dedicated pediatrician in the town of Napajedla. She worked there until retirement. She died on June 8, 2024.
