Ludmila Švecová

* 1939

  • "They were relatives of ours, he was also a Stuchlik, he had a farm at the end of the village. And my parents found out that there was a German hiding there. Dad went there during the revolution. I think he went there with a gun. He asked about the fact that they had a German hidden there. But maybe the German left after that. I don't know what happened next. But then there was hostility between Stuchlik, my mother's brother, and Stuchlik, a distant relative. But then somehow it came to the point that they met, and this Mr. Stuchlík said, 'You know, that German came to us across the field from Vidonice, all lost, sick, so we were not going to expel him.' And so I know that even my father was sorry that he came with such hostility then, that they were hiding a German, he was sorry."

  • "We arrived there somehow on a Sunday and on Wednesday it started. I was there with a friend of mine and she suddenly says what strange manners they have here, that they wake us up at five o'clock in the morning with the local radio. And then we came into the hall and found out we were occupied. So of course I went straight to the square, which was full of tanks, Nadia stayed lying down, she didn't care. But I went and I saw the soldiers, the tank men, all amazed, where did it come from? Now people wanted to talk to them in Russian, they didn't know, they didn't understand anything. Whereas the officers, they were already saying to be quiet, to leave the soldiers alone. The officers knew what was going on, but the ordinary soldiers didn't.

  • "He was arrested because our neighbour turned him in, probably for some vindictive reasons. Dad was teaching at a one-room schoolhouse, and he was also teaching her son, who wasn't a good student and was failing his classes. She accused him of listening to foreign radio. So one day the Germans came, I know this from my mother's story, the Germans came, they took dad to go with them. But he came back in the evening. He said: 'They stayed somewhere in Roprachtice, got drunk there and let me go home.' But a fortnight later they came for him again, and he didn't come back. He was in Jičín in the Kartouze prison, we didn't know what was wrong with him. My mother was all desperate, my brother was young, I was three years old, and so it was that we moved to the village of Kal to my mother's brother."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Vrchlabí, 24.02.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 02:03:24
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Father returned from jail devastated but defended the informer in court

Ludmila Švecová, current photography
Ludmila Švecová, current photography
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Ludmila Švecová was born on 2 October 1939 in Vysoké nad Jizerou. Her father, Jan Mecnar, first taught in Subcarpathian Rus and then became a teacher at the municipal school in Stará Ves near Vysoké nad Jizerou. He was arrested in 1941 for listening to a foreign radio, for which he could have been sentenced to death. Ludmila’s father spent two and a half years in prison in Bayreuth. He returned in an impoverished state and with lifelong health consequences. After the war, the informer was tried, but the good-hearted Jan Mecnar did not demand any punishment for her. Ludmila Švecová witnessed the liberation in May 1945, but also the deportations of the original German inhabitants. She and her brother joined the renewed Scouts and read the stories of the Swift Arrows. After 1948, her father lost his job because of his political views and the family had to move to Hostinné. In 1956, the witness successfully completed her studies at secondary school and joined the ČSAD company in Vrchlabí and later in Hostinné. Because she did not agree with the occupation by the Warsaw Pact troops, she was transferred to a different and lower paid job. Later, due to increasing pressure, she left for an eye clinic in Nové Zámky, where she stayed until November 1989. She signed the petition “A few sentences” and wrote a letter in its defence. She sent it to the radio station Svobodná Evropa, where it was read out with her name on it. In November 1989, she attended a mass on the occasion of the canonization of St. Agnes of Bohemia in St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague. After her return, she put up posters and leaflets in support of the Velvet Revolution. In the 1990s she worked for Catholic Charity, a job she considered the most meaningful in her life. In 2023 she lived in Hostinné.