Anita Štěpánková

* 1944

  • "You talk about the displaced Germans and how they had to leave only with a few things, you mentioned that several times, so it seems to me that you feel with those people that they had to leave their homes. Tell me, do you think it was a wrong on them, or was it okay when you perceive it in retrospect?" - "I think, my personal opinion is that it was a wrong on them, because they were born here, as well as their ancestors. Well, but that was the time, it was after the war, that was the arrangement. I feel for those people who had to leave and leave everything here. But nothing could be done about it. That was the time, that's how I took it. Looking back, it must have been terrible for them, I can understand that. And it also involved my family, so I felt for those people, yes, I did. I think it was an injustice to them. Simply put, war is never fair. That's how I would sum it up.'

  • "Here we bought the house on the square and continued to farm. Then, of course, the cooperative started, so they forced dad to join the cooperative. Dad was afraid, so he joined them, and mom said: 'The cattle are mine, I won't give them to them.' So, when my sister was finishing primary school, she got to go to high school. Then I was finishing primary school at that time and I was not allowed to attend any school anymore, nor the vocational school, because they said that we have to join the cooperative, when we have a farm. So, I actually finished school at the age of thirteen and a half. We were not allowed to attend school, so the military forests employed us part-time and I worked in the forest, actually as a thirteen-and-a-half-year-old girl. Today it would be illegal.'

  • "My grandmother, because all her children were expelled, had a stroke in Lhota, after which she was only lying in bed for two years. My father was arrested in Lhota for six months. So, my mom was left alone to do the farming only with grandpa and grandma lying. Dad's friends used to go there to help her. After half a year, they set him free, and of course, the Lipno flood came again..."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Horní Planá, 22.06.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:08:35
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War is never fair

Anita with her older sister Anna in Loutka (1946)
Anita with her older sister Anna in Loutka (1946)
zdroj: archive of the witness

Anita Štěpánková, born Králová, was born on December 25, 1944 in the village Loutka, Reith in German, in Pošumaví region, South Bohemia. The village no longer exists today, it was flattened to the ground as a result of the creation of the proving ground of Boletice. She came from a mixed family, her father Eduard Král was Czech, her mother Hermina, née Stropková, had German nationality. Hermina inherited the farm from her parents, the family lived there. After the war, it was confiscated by the state on the basis of Beneš decrees, and the Král family moved to Bližší Lhota near Horní Planá, where they bought a poorer house and land for farming. In 1955, her father Eduard Král was sentenced to five months in prison in a Kangaroo court for listening to Western radio. The house in Bližší Lhota fell into the flood zone of the newly built Lipno dam, and the Král family had to leave. They moved to Horní Planá. The parents of the witness resisted collectivization. After graduating from primary school, Anita was not allowed to continue her studies. She worked as a temporary worker in the forest and as a worker in dairies. In 1963, she married Miloš Štěpánek, then two sons were born one shortly after the other. After maternity leave, she started working as a nurse in a creche and completed her distance learning medical school. In 2021, Anita Štěpánková lived in Horní Planá.