Soňa Procházková

* 1929

  • "Jara was six months old when I went to work. I was working as a headmistress in a kindergarten, and when my husband was arrested, they wrote to me that there was no room in any school in the whole Liberec district, so I should go to the factory. So a cook came and said they had fired the cleaner, so I went to clean the kindergarten where I was the director. In the winter I used to bring coal, and there were four big stoves. In the morning I'd go to the fire and my mother would watch the two children. Jara was one year old and Jindra was three. I took Jindra with me to kindergarten, but Mama watched Jara. It was a burden, but we managed everything."" "

  • "They were fixing a car in the forest, somewhere in the direction of Nová Paka. So he went there on the evening of May 4 to look and they shot him. They put him on a wagon with horses and took him to Jičín to the hospital. Someone went there and my brother asked them to tell my father that they were taking him to the hospital. On the fifth, my father and I took our bicycles and rode to Jicin. Father spoke perfect German, so he went to ask the Gestapo where my brother was. Because we arrived at the hospital and they told us that the Gestapo had taken him away during the night. Dad went to ask the Gestapo, but they didn't know anything. Then on the 8th of May a telegram came from Lomnica saying that the funeral was to be held tomorrow. One farmer lent a horse, another farmer lent a carriage, and on the morning of May 9 we went to the funeral in Lomnica. There were five coffins in the Sokol room. In the middle was Kozak and he was the only one with a white coffin. They didn't know that Jara was also unmarried, nobody knew him there. It was only a friend who recognized him as Jarda Uhlíř. They apologized that he didn't get a white coffin, only Kozak. There were four coffins, and there was a white one in the middle. The resistance started early in Semily and they were afraid that when the funeral procession would go through Lomnica, the Germans would attack us. So they went somewhere to the side. They buried him and then we had him exhumed and on July 6 he was cremated in Semily.""

  • "He worked at OP Prostějov, it was a clothing factory. He worked there as an accountant and on June 4, 1957, when my daughter was eighteen months old, he went to work and came back in five and a half years. I was pregnant with Jara. Then, there was supposed to be a trial and everybody told me that when the trial was over my husband would come home. The trial was on about December 5, I didn't go to the trial and I asked when he was coming. They told me in ten years. In 1957, when Jára was to be born, I was in Liberec in Lesní Street to take care of something. The policeman told me that he was going to see my husband in court and if I wanted I could go with him and talk to my husband for a while."

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    Hrádek nad Nisou, 04.04.2022

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The Nazis executed her brother on May 5, 1945. They mistook him for a partisan

Soňa Procházková in 1947
Soňa Procházková in 1947
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Soňa Procházková, née Uhlířová, was born on 11 March 1929 in Hradec Králové. In 1938, in connection with the worsening political situation, her parents decided to leave the big city and took refuge with her grandparents in Lužná near Jičín. Here the family lived through the whole war and because they had a farm, they had to pay for the obligatory deliveries. In order to leave more food for their children, they tried to circumvent the war regulations. In May 1945, tragedy struck the family when the brother of witness, Jaroslav Uhlíř, was shot by the Germans as a suspected partisan. The Uhlirs then moved to the borderlands, where they hoped to start a new life. In 1955, she married Antonín Procházka, but even the 1950s did not bring them peace, as two years later her husband was sentenced to ten years and imprisoned in the Vojna camp near Příbram. Sona Procházková was left alone with two small children and could see her husband only once every three years. After his release, they tried to live a peaceful life. In 2022, she lived with her husband in Hrádek nad Nisou.