Eva Krupková

* 1953

  • When the war started, my dad worked with phones, he would come and find out that a phone was not working. He went to fix it and there were partisans in Mříčné. He made a deal with them, and he used to bring them food there at night. My grandmother used to go to her native region and bring meat and bread. My grandpa used to go to meet with her in Stará Paka because he had a tool bag and was wearing work trousers. He could speak German, so they let him go even though his bag was full of food. He used to bring bread and other stuff up to Strážník in the evenings. He had to be careful because there was a man who reported people to the Germans living in our block of flats. He had to be careful so that he did not find out about it accidentally because the entire family would end up in a concentration camp – grandma, grandpa and my mom had also been born at that time. She told us that her dad would always get lost at around ten o´clock in the evening. He came at two o´clock in the morning. Grandma unlocked the door quickly; Dad sometimes had to come in through the back door so that the man did not see him. He said after the war that he had not cooperated with the Germans but it was true that he used to report people and many people ended up in a concentration camp because of him.”

  • “A traffic officer was standing in the morning at the crossroads by Atesa roundabout in Jilemnice. We went there and were wondering what was happening and went to have a look.” – “The entire family?”- “No, children, girls and boys. We were standing just down the street. There were people from Autobrzdy company there, some blue-collar workers came to see what was going on. And suddenly a man came there, he was acting the know-all and waving a camera in front of his [soldier´s] nose. He lashed out and pulled it (the trigger). And as he turned to the other side – a man and a woman were standing there – he shot them.” – “The soldier pulled it?” – “A machine gun. I turned to the right and a bullet flew next to me, it lodged in the ground. My father heard there was a shooting there and came running for me and said: 'Go home!' And I said: 'A bullet flew next to me.' He wanted to take a gun and wanted to kill the soldier. Grandma told him not to go anywhere that he would get in trouble because of it. So, he took me home, and they scolded me at home that I should have not been there. And the woman was pregnant, she had a miscarriage. The other man was badly shot and was in hospital.”

  • “It was in 1939, he was summoned, and he did forced labour in a camp somewhere between Germany and Belgium. They dug foundations. He and his four or five friends managed to run away to France. He said it was horrible – when they were escaping, the Germans were shooting at them but did not catch them. My father jumped into a pile of wood and his friend fell on dung. Then they were hiding in a wine cellar for two or three days so that they did not find them. The owner of the farm took them out and he had a connection to France where other liaisons smuggled people who had escaped. The liaison took them to France where it had already started to form. They took them to England crossing the English Channel. He said he was holding on to a mast, the wind was strong, and he could see drowned people. He was hoping he could get there. They got there and he met with his friends who had escaped with him in the port in England. They started to form them into our army in England and he was a tank driver."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Jilemnice, 08.12.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:10:54
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

He liberated Czechia in an American tank. Communist tormented his daughter

Eva Krupková when she was fifteen years old
Eva Krupková when she was fifteen years old
zdroj: witness´s archive

Eva Krupková was born on 12 July 1953 in Jilemnice. Her father Jaroslav Medlík escaped from forced labour during the Second World War, and he crossed the English Channel to England in 1944. There, he joined the Army where he served as a tank driver. He fought on the Western Front, during the siege of Dunkirk and liberated West Bohemia in the army of American General Patton. Her maternal grandfather Jaroslav Trojan helped partisans whom he supplied with food during the German occupation. During Communism, the family was affected by the fact that their father fought in the West. Because he protested against the monetary reform in 1953, he was fired from ČSAD company (Czechoslovak State Automobile Transport). The witness was bullied by some teachers at school, she was not allowed to study at secondary school, she instead studied to become a shop assistant. On 21 August 1968 in Jilemnice, she experienced a conflict between citizens and occupants during which a bullet from a machine gun narrowly missed her. She married in 1973, and she and her husband František Krupka had two daughters and a son. Her daughter was also in danger of not being admitted to secondary school because of a bad assessment. After maternity leave, Eva Krupková worked in Mileta and Ateso companies in Jilemnice. She took early retirement at the age of 56 after a difficult operation. In 2022 she lived in Jilemnice.