Marta Křížová

* 1939

  • „We had classes here in villas where the original owners did not return - either Jews or Germans. The lower classes used to be in about five villas, including the director's office. Otherwise, such wooden pavilions were built here, which stood here until recently. We quite liked going there. We could also ride bikes to school. Today the students go by bus, but we walked. We made lifelong friendships. We keep in touch and are friends to this day. I think my math teachers influenced me. Surprisingly, I liked maths. We had an excellent teacher, Mr. Knobloch. That then decided that I went to industrial school.“

  • “Liberation by the famous Soviet army, when they were really welcomed warmly. People took soldiers to their families, invited them to lunch, and it was so honest. People showed gratitude. It didn't last very long. But in those days after the war, that's how it was. At the end of the war, I remember when there was the Prague Uprising. When Pankrác was burning, we watched it. Dad was laying a big white sheet up here with the men on the hill so they could drop some weapons from the planes to go to the barricades. But we were already so far away, so we more or less just observed what was happening. We didn't experience it directly.“

  • „It was marked enough. Dad was soon fired because he worked at Mannesmann in a high post as a deputy director. Then he ended up in a warehouse. The neighbors across the street were closed again, the whole family. A classmate at school had his mother locked up. We were overwhelmed by such fear of what was happening in the 1950s. Even when a person was a child, he perceived it because one could see what was happening around him.“

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha, 15.02.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 18:12
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Let‘s appreciate where we live. Our country is beautiful

Marta Křížová as a child (second half of 1940s)
Marta Křížová as a child (second half of 1940s)
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Marta Křížová, nee Pipková, was born on September 22, 1939 in Prague. She grew up in Braník, Prague. Her parents raised her in the spirit of sport since early childhood. She likes to remember trips to the mountains. In May 1945, during the Prague Uprising, she watched the smoke rising from the Pankrác district, where heavy fighting was taking place on the barricades. After the communist coup, a more difficult time came for her family. Her father dropped from the position of deputy director of Mannesmann to a menial job in a warehouse. In the 1950s, she graduated from a secondary technical school. In March 1969, after the victory of the Czechoslovak hockey players over the Russians, together with her husband, she witnessed the intervention of law enforcement officers at the office of the Soviet airline company Aeroflot on Wenceslas Square in Prague. In November 1989, the witness participated in demonstrations. A year after the Velvet Revolution, she looked beyond the borders of Czechoslovakia for the first time in her life. In 2022, she lived in Prague.