Libuše Beranová

* 1932

  • "And when I was in the third year, there was a revolution. My mother once went shopping and came back from shopping and said: 'There is a revolution, they are tearing down the German signs from the shops and from all the signs that were on the street.' Well, the Germans then started to defend themselves, the fight started and it was dangerous, so we hid in shelter, in the basement. And we had to go to the apartment for the night and we slept in the hall. Because Germans lived across the street from us and shot at our windows. We put mattresses on the floor and slept on them. And we also made barricades, there were trash cans in Dobrovského Street, and people pulled out paving stones and put them in those trash cans to weigh them down. And in Letohradská street, there was an overturned tram, it was against the park, because the park was occupied by the Germans - and there were also German women who fired from a canon at the Old Town Hall and also damaged it."

  • "They shouted at me: 'WeisRotBlau, tschechische sau!' When I told about it at home, my mother was very sad. And she didn't let me go to school alone, she took me to school. And once we were walking like that and in front of us, about half a meter, a dagger fell from above, someone threw it from the window and it stuck in the ground. And my mother said: 'That's enough, I won't be here.' And we came back and she didn't even take me to school anymore, but we went straight back home. She called dad and he was looking for a moving truck so we could move out. And finally, he succeeded, we loaded the furniture and all the things and moved inland, to Mladá Boleslav, to my father's mother. To my grandmother in Mladá Boleslav."

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    Praha, 22.07.2022

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All my classmates started speaking German and then hated me

Libuše Beranová (en)
Libuše Beranová (en)
zdroj: archív pamětnice

Libuše Beranová, born Rakušanová, was born on February 8, 1932 in Ústí nad Labem. She went to school for the first time in September 1938, a month later, after the signing of the Munich Agreement, her hometown became part of Nazi Germany. Relations between the Czechs and Germans, which had been deteriorating for a long time, further escalated at that time. Libuša‘s father lost his job because of his Czech nationality, and the German-speaking children at school bullied Libuše. After the incident, when she was also in immediate physical danger, the family decided to quickly leave the city. They moved to the hinterland, initially living with their grandmother in Mladá Boleslav, then in unsatisfactory conditions in Vinohrady, Prague. After a long search, the father finally got a job as a manager and a service apartment in Prague‘s Letná. The family settled there permanently. At Letná they experienced a relatively dramatic end to the war, after the outbreak of the Prague Uprising there were fierce battles between the insurgents and members of the SS units. After the war, Libuše graduated from a multi-year gymnasium and then a distance learning faculty. She aspired to become a kindergarten teacher, she briefly devoted herself to this work, but due to her ‚staff profile‘ and later health problems, she had to leave the position. She then worked as a worker in a disabled people‘s cooperative. She raised two children, is a widow and still lives (year 2022) in Letná in Prague.