Marta Tothová

* 1934

  • “I didn’t understand, I didn’t know what was going on. What, and why? They kept on saying strike, strike - I didn’t know what a strike was! I had never heard the word before. They sent us out from school, we had a day off and we went home. That was it for me. Oh, actually except one interesting matter. When there were the elections in 1948, there were two options - the Communist Party, and then a blank ticket, so that there wasn’t just one ticket. And in our village, I don’t know how many per cent, but there was an awful lot of blank tickets. So I know that at school they cursed me and called me a collaborator.” [Note: These were the elections to the National Assembly, which took place on 30 May 1948. The united electoral list of the National Front was fully under the control of the Communist Party.]

  • “They unloaded us at the station. I remember how they took us for lunch. That was the first time I ate dumplings, I thought: ‘What is this white, half-baked roll?’ But seeing that we were starving, it was awfully delicious. I don’t know if it was with svíčková [a traditional Czech cream beef sauce - transl.], but it was awfully delicious. Then the Germans took us in carts to Služetín. We stayed in the school there, we were several families. The Germans brought us food, and the mums cooked. We were there for several days. The dads walked around the village and eyed up the farms, but the place was still full of Germans at the time. My dad was in Jankovice and several other villages, and then he came to Rankovice, and he liked it there the most - the other families from Poland also liked the village. And he got the farm that he chose, and so we moved in there.”

  • “Then Polish robber bands started rampaging the area. They robbed us twice, they always came in the night. When they came the second time, my parents decided we should leave Poland. [The robbers] had emptied all the books from my satchel, and they’d stolen it because it was made of leather. I’d gotten from my sister, who’d attended school before the war. So then I said: I won’t go to school any more, if I don’t have my satchel, I’ll stay at home... They took whatever they found useful, clothes, bed linen, cloths, whoever had them, or if someone had a nice fur coat that came in handy... People reported it, and the same ones came to investigate it, the people recognised that they were one and the same, those who came in the day and those who came disguised at night.”

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The Poles wanted to clean up their country after the war, and so we left. And now I just pray that people will not have to keep running away

Tothová Marta Ignácov.jpg (historic)
Marta Tothová
zdroj: archiv Ivany Tothové, současné foto Jakub Anderle

Marta Tothová, née Pospíšilová, was born on 27 February 1934 as the second daughter of Adolf and Amélie Pospíšil. The family lived in the village of Ignaców near Zelów, in Poland. The inhabitants of the area were a mix of Poles, Czechs, Germans, and Jews. Czechs comprised a more-or-less closed community of Evangelicals. When Poland was occupied, the family had to give levies from their small farm. Schools remained open only for German children and for Czechs who signed up for German nationality. In early 1945 the German inhabitants fled from the approaching Red Army. With the Germans gone, all of the Czech inhabitants began to feel hatred from the Poles. Their children were expelled from school for some time, and assaults became more frequent. After being burgled overnight for a second time, the Pospíšil decided to move to Czechoslovakia. They took only their duvets, and together the family with four children boarded a cargo train full of Czech families headed to Katovice. For a time they stayed with relatives in Liberec, then they moved to Teplá near Mariánské Lázně. The local Germans had to support their upkeep, and the newcomers could chose where they wanted to live. The Pospíšils moved in to Richard Heidel‘s farm in Rankovice. They lived there together for several months. When the German population was expelled, they were left with a large and well-equipped farm. In 1948 the resettled Polish Czechs, who had taken up most of the homes in Rankovice, were given the choice to establish either a state farm, or a united agricultural cooperative. Bad management of the state farm, which had collectivised all the real estate property, all the farming equipment and cattle, forced most people to leave the area - they were not able to earn a living. At the time the witness was already working as a nurse at the surgical ward of the Sokolov hospital, where she was given employment after graduating from medical school.