Marie Fiedlerová

* 1937

  • "Collectivization changed life in the village terribly. People who had worked under those farmers came to power. And they took advantage of it. They were communists and took the village by hand. They were people who didn't have much before, and suddenly they did. Dad didn't fight with that much. When they came to take our fields, there was one communist from Boleslav and someone from Řepov. Dad said to my mother: 'You know what, that person from Řepov was worse, the person from Boleslav at least understood that it was difficult for us, but that person from Řepov did not.' Then there was a monument with the Virgin Mary by the pond, and suddenly in the morning it was demolished, someone apparently knocked it down with a tractor."

  • "The victims were brought to the U Vítků pub to the hall. They lay in that hall before the funeral was prepared, the cemetery was only in Plazy. They buried them all in one grave, but each in their own coffin. My mother and I were there, there were plenty of Řepov people. It was quite a nice day." - "How was the funeral?" - "Unfortunately, I don't remember that anymore, I just know it was a nice day. At the time, I thought that when they were placing them in the grave, I remembered the song, 'Light up to me, you golden sun, the last journey.' Then, in the 1950s, they installed a cemetery in Řepov and they brought the victims here. There is a large monument and it says: 'We gave life, you give love'. There was a successful football team in the village, my father played and my brother was good too, I have to be proud of that. They always held a tournament on the anniversary of May 9, and the day before people went to a memorial. A representative of football and the community and everyone present, they spoke there, the flower was laid and then the tournament took place. The tournament took place for years, unfortunately not anymore."

  • "It was a pretty nice day. Unfortunately, I don't remember what I was doing, I'm not too hardworking to be helping in the barn. I read a lot and I always sat by the window with a book, my parents tolerated it, so maybe I did that, or I was running around the yard. And suddenly planes started flying, we heard them fly. I didn't know what was going on. My dad already rode away on his bike and the men on their cart. Then our dad came back without a bike, it was visible that he was very upset. He picked up my little sister, put her in the pram, took the most necessary things, and mainly wanted us to be out of the village. Grandma and grandpa didn't go. Grandma said that if something was to happen, it would happen. That she wouldn't go anywhere. Dad took us past the last Řepov houses towards Kolomuty. There used to be no trees and we could see all the way to Kolomuty. And there we sat in a ditch with a few other people, there weren't many of them. Dad had a bit of a shard in his leg, but he was upset because he saw the horror in Boleslav. And when he decided that it was theoretically calm, we returned home and Grandma had already baked sweet buns."

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    Řepov, 22.11.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:06:45
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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Soviet pilots killed nine people from Řepov after the war. She knew each one of them

Marie Fiedlerová in 2021
Marie Fiedlerová in 2021
zdroj: Post Bellum

Marie Fiedlerová was born on December 2, 1937 and grew up with her family on a farm in Řepov, Central Bohemia, near Mladá Boleslav. The family earned living through a farm they ran. The war significantly affected their lives, especially at the end of the war years. The German garrison lived in the village, and the officers slept twice in the Fiedlers‘ house. Marie and other children also brought food to Russian prisoners. Towards the end of the war, the whole family often had to go to the cellar, because planes bombed the nearby industrial Boleslav. However, the planes dropped bombs on the city on May 9, 1945, already in peacetime. Some bombs landed near Maria‘s house, but fortunately they did not explode. However, nine inhabitants of Řepov died directly in Mladá Boleslav, Marie knew most of them and then attended the funeral. After the war, she entered school and studied at the four-year business academy. The communist collectivization of agriculture deprived the Fiedlers of the farm and the monetary reform of 1953 and of their savings. A year later, the witness‘s father died of a stroke. After graduation, Marie worked for the Boleslav savings bank. She loved to travel, the witness experienced the events of the August 1968 invasion in Bulgaria by the sea. She remained single during her life and in 2021 she lived with her younger sister in a family house in Řepov.