“Well, the teacher dressed us and led us away, she rang the bell - and no one answered. So Vlastička said to try ringing the neighbor, that we knew Mrs. Látalová and we also sometimes went to her house. Mrs. Látalová was at home, she rang the bell, nothing happened again, but she had a spare key to our apartment, so she opened it. Well, I don't remember anything, basically neither does Vlastička, because Mrs. Látalová immediately took us to her apartment, and we did not know what happened after that. Only later, that is, the next day, my mother told us that the Gestapo had come there, searched the apartment, and Mrs. Látalová then said that the apartment was in a terrible state, and that my mother was sitting there in a state of shock among the piles of things that were scattered there.”
"We found out about it in a strange way as well. At that time, my mother sent him money so that he could buy something there, and the money was returned to us, that is, to my mother, with the fact that the addressee had died, but we did not receive a death certificate. Only then did my mother, knowing German, simply wrote a request for a death certificate to be issued."
“Mom didn't visit us much, she didn't want to point out where dad´s daughters were. But when she wrote to him, she talked about us. That I grew two centimeters, Vlastička too, that she sends kisses and so on, but she didn't mention that I was in Budějovice and she was in Krahulčí. She was afraid to write that.”
“So I ran out, well, but after a while there was the sound of an air raid, so suddenly there was no one in those streets, everyone hid and I ran alone. It was strange to me that I didn't meet anyone, well, it made me feel uncomfortable, because there was no one anywhere... And when I ran to the big door and started banging on it, someone heard it, so that's how I got into the cellar, where the aunt had already arranged. There we had warm clothes, water, just the bare essentials. I still got these glasses, just in case, so that they protected my vision.”
Alena Zemková, née Pavlíková, was born on March 25, 1940 in České Budějovice. Her father, Rudolf Pavlík, worked as a secretary of the post office, through which he was connected to the Czechoslovak resistance during the war. His anti-Nazi activity became fatal for him on December 17, 1942, when he was arrested at work by the Gestapo. He gradually moved from Pankrác to Terezín, finally ending up in the Auschwitz concentration camp. After his arrest, Alena was taken by her mother to her parents and Alena‘s sister to her sister-in-law to keep the girls safe. Her mother corresponded with her father long-distance until his death in 1943. Alena Zemková experienced a raid on České Budějovice in 1945. A year after the war, Alena and her sister returned to their mother in Prague. They participated in many commemorative events to honor the resistance fighters and received the war decorations that their father received in memoriam. In the 1950s, Alena graduated from high school and then graduated from a college of pedagogy. She first taught at the location in Říčany and later returned to Prague. She taught at various Prague grammar schools and in 1983 became the director of the Postupická Grammar School. She also experienced the revolutionary year 1989 there. At the time of filming in 2022, she lived in Jesenice.
