Eliška Librová

* 1940

  • "Our years were ones to be slapped, because at home we talked our own way, our Moravian, but in school we were forced to speak only in German. And then the war ended, we went to school, and when we had finally managed to grasp some nouns, all was bad again, because we had to speak Czech again. Those were bad years."

  • "And I was then employed in a hospital, where I lived through another horror. There were nuns from an order there, sworn sisters, and we took a very hard hit when they took them away from us. They were nice old ladies, who tried oh so hard to give us something in life. And now suddenly they have to go. It was maybe even worse for me, than all the stuff that was happening at home. Because, you could say, those nuns were like second mothers to us. They gave us love, cherished us."

  • "When the Russian soldiers went away, they sent us behind the roads onto the meadows. The Russians killed cattle for themselves there. And we carried the cow's heads home by the horns. Our family then cooked good soups from them, so that we could recover from everything. I can remember it as if it was today, how we ran out onto the meadow, and there was everything you can imagine, and we only took that head by the horns."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Ostrava, 07.09.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:12:20
  • 2

    Ostrava, 10.09.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 47:29
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I was hurt because of my dad and for a long time I couldn‘t take even a word of German

Librová Eliška / the 60s
Librová Eliška / the 60s
zdroj: archiv Eliška Librové

Eliška Librová, formerly Ohřálová, was born on the 29 September 1940 in Kobeřice na Hlučínsku. After the Hlučín Region was annexed by the Third Reich, her father was forcibly conscripted into the Wehrmacht. He died in February 1945 during the bombing of a field hospital in the city of Görlitz. She experienced the front moving across Kobeřice with her mother, siblings and other relatives. They were forced to hide in cellars. Their bakery was occupied by Soviet troops. After February 1948 the Communists closed this bakery, which was inherited by the witness‘s uncle from her grandfather. After school she started working at a hospital in Fifejdy v Ostravě, where sworn nuns of religious orders still worked into the mid 50s. They were later interned in Bílá Voda u Javorníka, where the witness visited them repeatedly. She later worked in the steelworks Nová huť Klementa Gottwalda in Ostrava. She married Karel Libra, with whom she had four children. Following this she worked in Kobeřice delivering mail until her retirement. She was very active in the Kobeřice Catholic parish. Among other things, she lead the choir there. She also went on unofficial Christian holidays with her husband. In 1985 she went on a pilgrimage to Velehrad. She signed a petition calling for religious freedom. She participated in the canonization of St. Agnes of Bohemia in Rome of November 1989. She still lived in Kobeřice in 2021.