Vlasta Prokopová

* 1928

  • “A good German commissioner in Krchleby did not hurt anyone, yet helped everyone. His sister and her son lived with him. Because they were Germans, they pulled them out and started beating them. Ordinary Czech people did it. Maybe they were the ones who told the most on others. But I don't know for sure. There was one more. We knew he was a denouncer. So they beat him. But this Commissioner and his sister, who came there at the end of the war and was not responsible for anything ... The hatred of the Germans, the suffering and the misery, some wanted just to get it out.”

  • “I saw a couple for the first time in my life. It was such a scent that flowed through the kitchen that I had never felt it before. Daddy joked that Mom cut off her fingers, but then put it right. When my mother cooked the sausage, she split the legs, one for my dad and one for me. I said, 'Mom, why don't you marry?' She said, 'But it doesn't taste good to me.' she split the couple with dad. The memory always touches me. ”

  • “Soldiers marched around our house in Strašice. They were dressed differently. They always sang a song:,... and they took us from Ukraine ... ‘In Strašice, these soldiers walked freely and asked, 'Kotoraja godina?' People understood them. It was strange to me. At first, I thought, 'They are prisoners, but why do they come here?' I never heard anything. Only then did we realized that it was an army of Ukrainians under German command.”

  • “Now the third question has come to name the German empires. The First Reich, the Second, was Bismarck's. And the Third Reich, Hitler's. He said, 'What happens next, what happens then?' I said, 'There will be the Fourth Reich.' He shouted at me: 'The Third Reich is incorruptible!' And he kept shouting at me. I had to go sit down. I got the worst grade from the exam. On the report list, on the dismissal report, I got E in German.”

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    Plzeň, 13.08.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 02:10:19
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
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Hard years

Vlasta Prokopová on the photo of the Commerce Academy in 1944
Vlasta Prokopová on the photo of the Commerce Academy in 1944
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice.

Vlasta Prokopová was born on November 7, 1928 in Holýšov under the girl name Štáhlová into a family of glass workers and a servant as their only child. She grew up in very poor circumstances in the aftermath of the economic crisis. In the autumn of 1934 she entered the first class of the Masaryk School in Holýšov. On 1 April 1937 her father died. After the occupation of Holýšov by the Wehrmacht on October 10, 1938, she left to live with her grandmother in Chalupy. She continued her schooling at the elementary school in Zemětice. In February 1939 her mother rented a small room in Zastávka u Přeštic. She finished her last year of elementary school in Dnešice. She started attending the secondary school on 1 September, 1939 in Přeštice. At the beginning of 1942, after the death of her second grandmother, she moved with her mother to an apartment in Krchleby. She graduated from the secondary school in Staňkov. She continued her education at the Business Academy in Pilsen. She experienced the first air raids on the city and participated in the remediation work. She finished school in June 1944. In the summer of the same year she joined Wehrertüchtigungslager WEL III - Strašice (Straschnitz) as an interpreter and administrative assistant. She worked in a training camp Hitler Youth (Hitler Youth) from Saxony. Here she met her lifelong girlfriend Elfried, who protected her all life long. She contributed to the operation of the camp. On phone she spoke with K.H. Frank and was present at Field Marshal Walter von Brauchitsch‘s visit. In March 1945 she moved with the whole camp to Mýto near Rokycany. On April 27, she went back home with fake documents to Krchleby. On May 4, she welcomed the first American tanks on the square in Stankov. After the liberation in Krchleby she witnessed raging mob and lynching of the German citizens. The witness did not wish to talk about her post-war fate. At the time of filming she lived a happy life in Holýšov.