Ludmila Hochmanová

* 1932

  • "I had a doll from a log. My mother made me such a skirt for it and... made of log. And we played handball on the road in front of our house, we called it handball. Or so we called it. And we had that, too, that our parents did for us, not just me, but more parents, they made a balloon like that. Like a ball. From a stocking - they stuffed old rags in there and stuff like that. Well, we played with it on the road."

  • "From that cousin of mine, her husband kind of lured me to that tractor station for the harvest. As a binder worker. Well, I went to the tractor station. The entire fortnight that I was there, I only sat on the binder machine on the first day. Otherwise, I drove a tractor. Always. There were seventy-two oilcans on that binder machine. We had to fill them in the evening. It was my job, but the tractor driver helped me. And so, we filled them. It was called Stauferka. Well, we filled them to have it ready for the morning, and again in the morning."

  • "... It was then, I don't know if there was already radio or if the drummer was still around. Well, they announced that the mobilization was taking place and that they had to go to Zádveřice for the train. So we went, the whole village, with them. The women cried, and us children, when we saw that the mothers were crying, we cried together with them."

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    Kroměříž, 06.11.2019

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    délka: 01:55:31
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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Being an honest person, nothing more

Ludmila Hochmanová in early childhood
Ludmila Hochmanová in early childhood
zdroj: archive of the witness

Ludmila Hochmanová was born on April 9, 1932 as the first of four children of František and Ludmila Řehák in the village Raková near Vizovice. The family was very poor, they lived on a modest farm. Her father fell down from the attic as a child and could not find a good job all his life because of his physical handicap. Her mom applied for a job at Baťa, but was not accepted. During the Second World War, a Hungarian soldier was housed with the Řehák family, and the witness also remembers fake partisans who robbed a shop and a tobacco shop in the village and murdered the innkeeper Ošker. After finishing elementary school, Ludmila Hochmanová could not continue her studies, the family could not afford it. Her siblings went to school, the witness as the eldest helped to provide for the family. At first she worked for her mother‘s cousin, later she worked as a knocker in Svit Zlín, where she met young communists and joined the Czechoslovak Youth Union (ČSM). She saw hope for a better life in the incoming regime. When she received an offer to work at the tractor station in Kvítkovice near Otrokovice, she accepted it and soon became the worker with the largest number of plowed hectares. As a reward, she was sent to III. world festival of youth and students to Berlin. In 1950, she joined the Communist Party. She met her husband Jaroslav Hochman, also a communist, in 1952. At first they lived together in Osek near Rokycan, after some time they moved to Moravia. From 1959 they lived in Hulín, where she worked as a worker at TOS Hulín until her retirement in 1983. Ludmila Hochmanová remained loyal to the Communist Party.