Bernadeta Fourová

* 1933

  • “At first a train went there, it wasn’t until later that they built the tram line there. Mum recounted how Dad set off by train at seven. And then he came rushing home and said: ‘Look, they’re checking through all the houses, what’ll we do with the uniform?’ Mum was the more courageous, so she just replied: ‘What are you afraid of?’ She took his uniform and put it in her wardrobe. They had a few plain wardrobes that they had made. So she put her own dress over the uniform and hung it up among the other dresses in her wardrobe. Dad has his own wardrobe. The German came along, passed his hand through the dresses, but didn’t find the uniform. Mum kept chatting the whole time, she could speak German. Only Dad was as white as a sheet.”

  • “The first bombing was in August. No one knew what was going on, there were planes zooming over our heads, the roaring was everywhere, everyone stood outside and watched. Then we had to run away, into the fields, because we were afraid, our whole street ran for it. We wanted to return home in the evening, but we weren’t allowed to because a bomb fell down in our street and didn’t explode. They were guarding it there, but Mum went and said she was going on her own responsibility, that she had to cook something for us. So she made us omelettes so we wouldn’t be hungry. We had been running bare foot over a stubble field towards Slatina. My feet were cut to bits. There were many such bombing runs after that; when I was at school they always let us go, but the planes were always already flying overhead before I reached home. It wasn’t easy.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Březí, 12.06.2014

    (audio)
    délka: 01:26:51
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

We had good times in Mušov, apart from the mosquitoes

fourova_bernadka_portret.jpg (historic)
Bernadeta Fourová
zdroj: Aktuální fotografie pořízena při rozhovoru s pamětnicí, dobová fotografie pochází z archivu pamětnice Gertrudy Kočí.

Bernadeta Fourová was born on 11 December 1933 in Líšeň, a village on the periphery of Brno. Her father Josef Jeřábek was active in World War I, first in the Austro-Hungarian army, then in 1918 he was captured by the Italians, where he joined the Czechoslovak legions and took part e.g. in the Battle of Piave River. Bernadeta Fourová spent her childhood in Líšeň with her father, mother, and four siblings. The family remained there until the end of World War II. When the war was over, her seventeen-year-old brother Jan wanted to set off to the border regions and take up farming, but his application was denied because he was not of age. The family thus decided that they would all leave Líšeň and move to the border region together. The Jeřábeks moved to Mušov. To begin with, Bernadeta Fourová did not spend much time there, as she had three more years of school to complete in Přerov, and she merely visited her parents there. In the autumn of 1948, her brother Josef decided to cross the borders, and he took his brother Oldřich with him. They both stayed abroad, Josef in the USA and Oldřich in Australia. After completing her primary school, Bernadeta Fourová lived with her parents in Mušov; upon marrying she moved to Horní Slavkov for three years. After her return she worked first in Brno and then in Mikulov. Like everyone else in the neighbourhood, from the early 1960s she anxiously watched the developing plans for the construction of the Novomlýnské (New Mill) Reservoirs, which counted with the flooding of Mušov. When the village was definitively designated for destruction, her family was forced to find a new home; after much searching it was decided to build a house in Březí, not far from Mikulov, where Bernadeta Fourová lives with her family to this day.