Dance parties were forbidden during the war, we danced to music from the gramophone in the backyard
Vlasta Zdráhalová, née Gruntová, was born on 12 December 1921 in Velká Bystřice near Olomouc. Her father, Karel Grunt, worked as a foreman in a foundry owned by Kosmos, and her mother was called Filomena. She had two younger sisters, Jarmila and Eliška. The family was financially secure and did not suffer even during the war. She finished school in 1936. She started to work in an office of the Moravia company in Mariánské údolí. Most of the people she worked with were German, and she remembers them fondly. There, she learnt to speak German well. After liberation in 1945, she married Antonín Zdráhal, who worked in a foundry in the Moravia company. She moved to Šumperk to live with him. They had two children in 1947 and 1951 and she did not go back to work after it. Her daughter married in Germany. She lived with her son in Šumperk and then moved to the St. Zdislava retirement home in Červená Voda. There she was looking forward to celebrating her 100th birthday in 2021.