Bohuslava Dvořáková

* 1936

  • "In 1970 they gave me a vacation to the Soviet Union, to Moscow. That is a memory too, I say to myself, himlhergot, people, have some sense and do not make wars anymore. There was that woman [hotel employee], when I came to the reception she said: 'I do not talk to Czechs, they killed my son.' I could not think of anything else, I said: 'You killed in our country too. And nobody invited you!' Two mothers were looking at each other, so I thought, this should not happen in the world."

  • "Well, it happened when I was still living in the house alone, my father was already in the army, it was in February sometime, so the soldiers from Přední Výtoň came. Mr. Doskočil also lived there in the flood area, he was an officer, he is dead too, so he came: 'People, pack up, water is on your threshold! Come on, in two hours you have water on your doorstep!' We did not believe it, I had chopped wood, everything piled up. And the lady, such a good woman, Mrs. Dorovínová, said: 'You know what, Bohunka? The boys will be all wet, we will bake them cakes and make them tea.' [Laughs] So instead of doing something, the soldiers came, moved everything they could to the traktorka [machine tractor station], and we baked, and in those two hours we baked cakes and tea. We moved it to the traktorka, what I had, my dad's socks, I gave it all to the boys, because when all the boys came here, the Jungwirts' grandmother, she had a little house, her goat was swimming, it was running away, so they were trying to catch the goat, the wood. Then there at the dam, it was like – it was unintended, but it was a trial. It kind of caused it to overflow as they let it go, but it was a trial. Well, they were catching everything they could there, on the dam."

  • "When I was walking from school, there was the school and we lived under the hill, in the parsonage. And there was this little low wall. And now one soldier after another sits on that wall. 'Baby, baby,' well, I did not know anything, did I. And now they are they were going through my bag, talking to me. So, my mum ran out, because I did not know they had come in there, there was a spare class in the parsonage, so that is where they were staying. And so they walked with us, we talked with them every evening, they celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi with us there, the big girls went, they always caught us little ones because they had children at home, they were Czech-Americans too, so they caught us many times in the village: 'My baby, my baby,' and they would pull out chocolate and gum."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Horní Planá, 29.06.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:54:41
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

People are not enough mature to be able to live in democracy

Bohuslava Dvořáková in 2021
Bohuslava Dvořáková in 2021
zdroj: Post Bellum

Bohuslava Dvořáková was born on 21 April 1936 in Subcarpathian Rus in the family of a Czech teacher. When she was one year old, the family moved back to the Czechoslovakia. Her father was arrested by Gestapo during the war and he avoided the penalty only thanks to an intervention of family doctor, who was their acquaintance from Subcarpathian Rus. The family spent the end of the war in Hoštice near Volyně which was liberated by the US Army. She took over her father’s occupation, she taught for more than 20 years at the primary school in Frymburk and later in other villages in Lipensko region where she met with children from the families of non-expelled Germans, remigrants and resettlers. In 1958 she witnessed the first unplanned flooding of Lipno dam. In August 1968, the commanders of Soviet occupation units visited the primary school in Frymburk. Her older son Bohuslav reached the rank of general, worked in NATO and took part in the military mission in Bosnia and later in Afghanistan. In 2021 the witness lived in Frymburk.