Krista Podaná

* 1940

  • "Mum said, 'We were together as husband and wife for about six weeks, because we got married, and he had to enlist and then he got leave, but still we weren't together for more than six weeks anyway.' And in 1941, Dad was supposed to die somewhere nearby Stalingrad, there were battles. There was his fellow fighter from Petřkovice with him, which is not far from us, and when he came on vacation, he had to explain to my mother that they were making trenches and had very heavy weapons, it was not like today. And that it was like on a swing, they conquered a bit and had to retreat a bit. And I'm also watching it on TV today [footage from the front] to see if I can see my dad somewhere, because I really don't know him. I was looking forward to him, because still in 1947 or 1948 there were still rumors that someone had returned from the Russian gulag. People told each other such messages. So, I kept waiting for my dad to come back. He didn't come back."

  • "Nobody can imagine that. We were sitting in the basement of Šilheřovice Castle, it was such a long and wide corridor. And they brought the wounded soldiers like sacks of potatoes in a truck and took them to the surgery room. And my mother and I had to sit and wait for our turn, because my injury was nothing compared to what the soldiers had. I kept seeing it in a dream until a very long time ago when I fell asleep. Then the staff doctor took us, but when we went back in the ambulance, we learned that the "krankenfotr" (ambulance man) did it, because the doctors there were in charge of the wounded soldiers. My injury wasn't that serious. When we were driving back, there is a forest between Šilheřovice and Hať, we were driving along a dirt road and the driver told us: 'Jump out and leave the door open'. We had to get off like this about three times. Because there was a plane flying over us, and when something moved, the plane fired. And when the door was left open, it looked like the car was abandoned. We got home, it went well.'

  • "I was little, so my friend and I were playing, and a front was coming. German soldiers hid the tank in a barn. And there was also a small grain thresher, enough for those who farmed the fields. And we went there to play and I was supposed to spin the cogwheels, but the soldiers caught a scout there and they were beating him, and I, as a curious child, turned around and put my hand between the cogwheels of the thresher, of which I have the consequences to this day. When mom found out, she threw a tantrum and said she was going to kill me. But the soldiers told her, as they saw my little finger hanging on the skin, that if I didn't get it treated within 24 hours, that I would get blood poisoning, bleed out, and that they wouldn't save me. So, mom took the bike, it was such a time and there was a front, she had a basket on the bike, they only have that in museums today. There she put me down in that basket and drove with me to Hlučín to the hospital. But Hať is a hill, a valley, a hill, a valley, and our landlady caught up with us and sent us to the military hospital in Šilheřovice Castle, saying that the staff doctor had arrived there."

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    Plzeň, 11.11.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:14:43
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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She played where the front went

Krista Podaná, 1956
Krista Podaná, 1956
zdroj: archive of the witness

Krista Podaná was born on April 25, 1940 in Hať in Hlučín area. She grew up with only her mother Anna Dudková, her father František Dudek died in 1941 on the Eastern Front. As a little girl, at the end of the war, she experienced the Ostrava operation - the offensive of the Soviet army. At that time, she and other children used to go to play in an abandoned barn where German soldiers had hidden a tank. There she seriously injured her hand and as a result of that she ended up in a field hospital in nearby Šilhéřovice. After the war, she and her mother stayed in Hať. Krista began to learn at a local seamstress, but eventually left at the age of 15 to work as a bricklayer for the construction of the Ostrava mines. Here she met her future husband, Ladislav Podaný, whom she married in 1959. She lived in Ostrava until the end of the 1980s, when she became a widow and moved to Čachrov in Šumava to be with her grown children.