Milada Pavelková

* 1943

  • "I wanted to be a saleswoman or a hairdresser. But at that time, people in power would decide. If you wanted to go to school, you needed a letter of permission from the municipal authority confirming that the council had allowed you to. When my application arrived, they said that I was a kulak's daughter and that factories needed people to work, and not apprentices. I had to join the factory. I joined the factory at the age of fourteen. I turned fourteen on a Sunday and I went to work in the factory on Monday."

  • "Women dug the potatoes out and a man stood by the wagon counting how many baskets full of potatoes they had brought. He never helped them dump a basket into the wagon, which was up high. He had to write his records. See how hard he worked? Then my mother got sick in her female parts due to all the work. Women were badly affected. My mum even had a stroke but recovered. She lived to a blessed age of eighty-four, and Daddy was ninety. Those had been terribly hard times, though."

  • "He had a beautiful seven-year-old gelding. It was so strong! Daddy took good care of it, too. When they took it out of the stable and onto the wagon, it was calm, it fight back, it was a good horse. When they took it out and it neighed on the wagon, Daddy cried like a little child. It was terrible. Those are terrible memories. He said, 'If God exists, somebody has to be punished for this.'"

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Červená Voda, 09.11.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:12:57
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Červená Voda, 24.05.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:23:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

They took our horse, it neighed, and Dad cried like a little kid

Milada Kalousková, married Pavelková, 1958
Milada Kalousková, married Pavelková, 1958
zdroj: Witness's archive

Milada Pavelková was born on 20 September 1943 and lived with her parents in Žampach near Letohrad until she was three years old. Her father Václav Kalousek (1901-1993) was a farmer and her mother Anna Kalousková (1906-1989) helped him and raised their three children, Milada, Bohuslav (1925-2003) and Jaroslav (1931-2013). The family moved to Dolní Orlice near Červená Voda into a house vacated by deported Germans. The parents started farming on a larger scale and gradually became more successful. In the 1950s, however, they were labeled kulaks, the communists took away all their equipment and livestock, and they had to make pointless deliveries. They worked from dawn to dusk yet had nearly nothing to eat themselves. They faced unbearable pressure until they joined a farming cooperative in 1955. Milada wanted to be a saleswoman, but as the daughter of a kulak she was not allowed to, the authorities decided. And so in 1957, at the age of 14, she joined the Orban textiles factory in Červená Voda. Thi is where she met Antonín Pavelka (1935-2019) who she married in 1959, and they settled in Červená Voda - Šanov. Three sons were born to them in 1959, 1960 and 1969. The witness has unpleasant memories of the occupation on 21 August 1968 as the barracks in Červena Voda were occupied by the Soviet Army very soon. Soviet convoys of heavy armoured vehicles frequently drove past their house day and night to the training grounds. They even damaged the local citizens‘ property several times. One day, they knocked down a cross in front of the church, and its fragments are still buried in another place. In 1989, the witness experienced great joy at the fall of the totalitarian regime, but this was marred for a long time by the tragic death of her son and his entire family. She worked at Orban for forty years and retired in 1997. In 2023, she lived in Červená Voda - Šanov.