Erna Podhorská

* 1930

  • "My mother said my grandfather was recognized as a good person who helped everyone. For example, he arranged for the building of the road from Porchov to Pskov, which was about forty kilometres away, and there were all the schools and everything. And grandfather suggested, come on, let's make a nice road there. So he was admired by everybody, almost like a mayor, he could advise everybody. But then when the revolution came, suddenly everything was bad. Mom said, 'We were running away and I suddenly saw people who used to treat us well and work for us, throwing pillows and blankets out of our bedroom, everything into the yard, and it was like they were happy that everything was theirs. ' So that was kind of a big escape for my family because they were afraid that maybe they were going to be killed, and so my mother said, 'I don't ever want to remember Russia again because it was terrible for us when they actually drove us off our property.'"

  • "I can still see it in front of my eyes, we were in Sokolovna and suddenly the town radio announced that the war was over. And we were coming out of the building, it was about Friday, and we all flew to the school on the square. There were a bunch of us, about twenty kids, and we ran, and we thought that the war was over, and we thought that the German soldiers were no longer there. But maybe the German soldiers were also happy that the war was over, because they ran out in all sorts of costumes, some in military suits, some just in their shorts, but we all slowly hugged each other in that square, saying that the war was over, even with the Germans. And when we got home, my mother was angry that they could have attacked us. We were crazy children who suffered terribly from the war. And now it was over, and we were so happy. It was a beautiful day."

  • "A big truck came, and imagine that everything that was in the store, the goods that were on our shelves, they took everything. They even dared to go through the door into our room and picking out of the cupboards what mom, when it was our birthday or Christmas, nobody bought presents, but we were given, for example, a bath towel or towels or nice dish towels, and mom said that's what we had for our trousseau, and they even went into that apartment and opened the cupboards and picked out all these goods our mother stored for us. Then in Mr. Ševčík's shop, there were three textile shops in Přelouč - the Svobodas, the Dejmals and Ševčík - and they put all these things in the Ševčíks' window. They showed us what we had hidden away, and someone wrote on the window: 'It's my daughter who has better trousseau!' They showed it as concealed goods. I don't know what happened at that time, because my parents had a good relationship with people, God forbid they were mean to anyone or spoke badly. They were always good people. And so communism robbed us pretty badly."

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In Russia they were impoverished by the Bolsheviks, in Czechoslovakia after 30 years by the Communists

Nineteen-year-old Erna Podhorská, née Dejmalová, in 1949
Nineteen-year-old Erna Podhorská, née Dejmalová, in 1949
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Erna Podhorska was born on May 3, 1930 in Přelouč as the second child of the Dejmals, who had a textile shop in this small East Bohemian town. They did so well that they built a tenement house in Prague‘s Strašnice district. They lost their thriving business after the communist takeover in 1948, as well as their Prague house, but they had to continue to pay the mortgage on it. They welcomed the end of the war, but feared the coming Soviet army, as Erna‘s mother had fled Russia with her parents after the Bolshevik Revolution and arrived in Czechoslovakia in 1920 with the Legionnaires. After the war, Erna studied at the business academy and medical school and worked as a nurse in the children‘s ward of the Pardubice hospital. In 1951 she married Vladimír Podhorský, whose family was severely persecuted during World War II. In 1966, her daughter Vladimíra was born and immediately after her maternity leave Erna Podhorská joined the infant care centre in Vesec, where she worked until 1991. She was widowed at the age of 43 and never remarried. In 2023 she lived with her daughter in Pardubice Rosice.