Hana Svobodová

* 1936

  • “Those were huge demonstrations. The Škoda company had forty thousand employees, it was a giant company. And the people stood up and went through the gates. The crowds of those people went to the square and were throwing flags, and busts of the leaders out of the National Committee. It was a big gathering in that square. I had an afternoon shift and these people were coming against me. Someone spat on my shoe as the crowds poured in. So I never made it to work. I went to have a look in the square and saw the despair as the things were being thrown out of the town hall. Then they called militias to disperse the people.”

  • “They invited us directly to the empty flats. We did not meet the Germans at all, they had already gone. The interesting thing was that they had to leave there so many things. They could take about fifty kilos per person. I still remember a man who was wearing five hats so that he could take them and a big backpack. They were the last ones leaving. Poor them. They did not know where else to put their stuff. Otherwise, we met only Czech people who had lived there before. Then they disappeared and came back again.”

  • “It was very nice. It seems to me as if nowadays when the Ukrainians are fleeing and we are welcoming them. They were able to offer those people every little room. It was out of solidarity and it was amazing that all people helped each other back then. It was also bad foodwise. There are no hills in Vodňany and there are large fields and mills there but there was no flour for people. So people went to the mills and begged there if they could sell them a kilo (of flour). But it was dangerous for millers because the Germans might have shot them if they had found out. It was cruel. Nevertheless, some of them sold it. But it happened that a man was planted there and the miller was shot. Some people were not good.”

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    Plzeň, 28.04.2022

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    délka: 02:10:53
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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People are not divided into states but into good and bad people

Hana Svobodová when she was fifteen years old, 1951
Hana Svobodová when she was fifteen years old, 1951
zdroj: witness´s archive

Hana Svobodová was born on 16 March 1936 in Písek as an illegitimate child of Julie Malcová. She spent the beginning of her life in Prachatice where her grandparents Malecs lived. Shortly after her birth, her mother got married to Jan Kolár who worked on the railway and he adopted Hana. The family decided to leave Prachatice in 1938 because the town became part of Nazi Germany based on the Munich Agreement. They fled to nearby Vodňany where they spent the whole war living in a room of a local shoemaker. Hana met Soviet and American soldiers in Vodňany. After the war, Vodňany became part of the American zone, but the demarcation line was nearby, across the Blanice River. Hana with her family returned to Prachatice at the end of 1945 where they were given a flat after the Germans left. She took part in XI Sokol Slet in Prague in 1948. She moved to Pilsen due to her mother´s new boyfriend at the end of 1948. She studied to become a lathe operator in the Škoda company (back then it was called V. I. Lenin plants) in Pilsen. She later finished her studies at Secondary technical school and worked as an administrative assistant in the company. When she was still a trainee, she experienced monetary reform in 1953 and the disturbances that followed. In 1958, she got married to Milan Svoboda who was employed as the head of the Sales Department in the Škoda company. He lost his job after 1968 because of his opinions on the new political situation. The married couple had two sons Radek and Milan. The family happily welcomed the changes after 1989 and Hana Svobodová left to work in the hospitality industry in Germany for some time. After her return, she started to study University of the Third Age. She became a widow in 2020. In Spring 2022, at the time of our interview, she lived in Pilsen - Slovany and was still active, following public events and taking care of her grandchildren.