Květuše Malá

* 1932

  • “Everything in German, of course. And they [teachers] were very much subjected to Hitler, very much. I remember that from time to time a comment would be made about me, because we were Czechs. But I did not take it seriously. We were Czechs. We were not Germans, we did not have contacts with Germans. There [in Odry] were ten Czech families and my father kept close to them. He was elected the mayor after the war. After he had come back and recovered. And he discovered documents [in the town hall]. The documents stated that we were murderers, half-murderers. I was classified there as a half-murderer. To be eliminated. If the war had ended badly, we would have been eliminated.”

  • “I remember that my father returned and that we [with my mother] had to hide him. I remember that we had to be in the basement, it was a large basement and our neighbours came in there, too. We stayed there for several days. Russians were shooting at Odry and the Germans were shooting back at them. It took quite a while before the Germans retreated. Then it was already over. I cautiously got out [of the basement] and I could already see the Russians running there. I was happy that they were there. But the shop windows were smashed and people were looting the shops. I also know that two of my classmates were raped by the Russians. The hospital was full of cases like that at that time. I put a hat on my head and I put on trousers, it was probably an instinct, I don’t know, and I spoke Polish and the Russians left me alone. But my friends, I know about two of them, were raped and they were hospitalized.”

  • “My father then worked in Ostrava. Obviously, he became a communist, and he was a member of the Party. But it was only until he went for some inspection to Donbas. I don’t know exactly what it was, but it was immediately after the war. He saw all the mess there. He got so angry about I, I cannot even describe it. He grabbed his membership card of the Communist Party and he threw it at their feet. What were they thinking… People have suffered so much and they now wanted to lead the nation like this? They obviously expulsed him from the Party and he was no longer a communist. He was also fired from his job and he had to go to do manual work. He worked in the electric works in Třebechovice on two large machines, and very few people were able to operate them, but thanks to that I was able to apply for study at the conservatory as a child of working-class parents. And I got admitted.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Brno, 19.10.2017

    (audio)
    délka: 02:18:27
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

If you have a good partner at your side, you will overcome everything

Květuše Malá, 1951
Květuše Malá, 1951
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Květuše Malá was born on September 22, 1932 in Bílovec in the Ostrava region. She grew up as the only child in the family of Karel Občil and his wife Ema. The family moved to Odry in 1938, and the town became part of the German Third Reich soon after. At the end of the war her father escaped from forced labour. Květuše and her mother were then hiding him in the basement. The family managed to survive also owing to the Germans who opposed Hitler. Květuše pursued an artistic career after the end of the war. She completed her studies and then she became an opera singer in the National Theatre in Brno. The communist regime interned her husband Josef in the uranium mines in Jáchymov in the 1950s. Until 1989 he and his wife lived under the surveillance of the StB. Květuše Malá lives in Brno.