Marta Kadlecová

* 1929

  • „When my mom opened the door, we saw a puddle in the hallway. Dad’s coat was hanging above it, water dripping from it. My dad was lying down in the bedroom, sleeping. After me and my mom ran off, the Germans arrested him because we raised the Czechoslovak flag on the post building. They drove him to the forest with yet another man. Both of them were forced to kneel in the rain the whole night and keep their hands stretched forward. Guards were swapping, toying with their rifles and threatening the hostages to kill them. One of the soldiers was kind, gave my dad a cigarette and told him: ‘Now, run home fast!’”

  • “My dad had a sister in Bratroňov near Nasavrky. We would spend our summer vacation there, helping her at the fields, receiving good milk and food. We would go to Bratroňov on bikes via Ležáky. At the end of the school year, Ležáky were burned down, that was horrible. When we got our grade sheets, our parents warned us not to ride through Ležáky. But me and my brother were curious and took the way through the village. I will never forget it. Smoke was still coming from some of the cottages and the road was guarded by SS-guards. We feared they could also hurt us. We rode fast through the village and nothing happened to us.”

  • “When we were in Proseč at my grandma’s, the mobilization was announced on the radio. There were plenty of uncles and aunts there; the aunts had cried and my mom said we needed to hurry home. I remember that when the guys were enlisted they were singing. The aunts and my mom were crying because they were saying goodbye to them, not knowing when would they return.“

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha, 13.03.2015

    (audio)
    délka: 01:09:10
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Memory of nations (in co-production with Czech television)
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

„When we rode through Ležáky, smoke was still coming from some of the cottages.“

Marta Kadlecová as a young girl, 1944
Marta Kadlecová as a young girl, 1944
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Marta Kadlecová (née Spálenská) was born on the 5th of March 1929 in Proseč near Skuteč. Her father served as postmaster in Nové Hrady. During the war, he destroyed denouncements addressed to the Gestapo and helping partisans. In 1942, Marta Kadlecová witnessed the burning down of the village of Ležáky, an act of revenge for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich. In May 1945, she and her mother raised the Czechoslovak flag on the post office building which lead to the arrest and nearly the shooting of her father. After the war, she graduated from a chemistry school in Prague. Initially, she worked in a sugar refinery, and later in the laboratory of the automobile factory in Mladá Boleslav. There she settled, got married and raised three children.