Family comes first
Božena Vlčková was born on 3 July 1958 in Šumperk to her mother Božena Mézlová, née Bagiňská, and her father Jaroslav Mézl. Her father fought in the Czechoslovak foreign army in France in 1940. Later he got to the Protectorate, where he cooperated with the partisans. After his resistance activities were discovered, he began to cooperate with the Gestapo in an attempt to save his life. He was imprisoned in 1945 until the mid-1950s. Her mother joined the anti-communist resistance after the war. In the late 1940s she was arrested and imprisoned too. So they met for the first time in court. Božena waited for Jaroslav‘s release from prison until 1956, then they got married and moved to northern Moravia. They had four children. Jaroslav Mézl was imprisoned repeatedly in the 1960s, and the family suffered from material deprivation. From her childhood, Božena remembers the visits of State Secret Police (StB) officers to their home. At the end of the 1960s, she lost both her parents, her mother succumbed to a serious illness, and her father took his own life. However, there is a rumour in the family that Jaroslav Mézl may have been murdered by the Secret Police. After the death of their parents, the siblings were separated. Božena lived with her twin sister Anna with an aunt in Němčice near Holešov. Later she was trained in Brno as a baker - confectioner. In 1977 she married Josef Vlček and had three children, a daughter Lucie and two sons Pavel and Zdeněk. The family still lives in Holešov, where she worked in a bakery and later ran a local grocery store. At the time of filming (2019), Božena Vlčková was retired.