Marcela Ulrichová

* 1939

  • "I know that, actually, even here at one time, there were painted, painted boards up on the court. These flyers appeared that they pinned up in different ways. It was quite nice and rhyming. And actually, or they were turning the signs around, that they were coming from here and needed directions, so the people here turned the signs to Prague, and they got the Russians at that time to Všešímy, and that's where it ended, there was nothing there, right. So they were confused. But they were, well, they were actually, afterward, when they were already going to Prague, and we were talking to them, to those soldiers, they didn't, they were surprised themselves, I think. They actually saw people here well dressed, the supplies were good, people just, people didn't call them names, people said, "What are you doing here? Go away. You are not supposed to be here." Well, they, actually, they just kept saying, "You have a revolution, you have a revolution, we have to intervene." "Who do you want to intervene against?" So, they were all young guys, they were all young guys."

  • "My uncle and aunt were still alive, and they said that a German family came to the house they had now, which originally belonged to the German family, and they were glad to see how everything had been remodeled. They didn't feel any resentment at all. Most of the Germans from there had not gone to East Germany but to West Germany, and they were doing well there. My uncle said they were outright impressed with how they maintained and repaired the house. The houses and villas that the Germans left were indeed beautiful. The original settlers never moved into the houses left by the Germans. They were inhabited by people who came to the borderlands, and they were mostly... well, they were called gold diggers. My dad, for example, said he could never live in the house of someone he knew."

  • "After 1968, during the vetting process, I was expelled from the Communist Party because I let my mouth do the talking. In Wenceslas Square, we had an overview of everything that was happening there because it was right under our windows. We saw how people were being attacked and how everything was going. We shouted at them from the windows, and to this day, I am surprised that nobody stormed in after us. Every time something happened, we ran out of the place and into Wenceslas Square. The person who was checking me out blamed me for my behavior at the time. I was angry when I told him he was there too. I had seen him there, and now he pretended as if he hadn't been there. I was not ashamed of what I thought and did (about the occupation). So I was kicked out...and I flew like a swallow."

  • "Those miners really didn't know if they were coming back from that job today. So there were maybe five pubs in Osek, as I remember. And it was just on payday. My mother and I couldn't understand it, and she was from here, so we called it airshow. It was just full, full, full pubs at every pub it was like that, so they played those skittles. They were just enjoying the day. And I know a lot of times even some of the women were waiting for them, so they would take some of that money from them so they could have a living for the kids afterward."

  • "The Russians have a different nature than we do. They have always been different. Back when I worked at Strojexport, they were difficult to deal with. Contracts with them were problematic. I may not have seen all the details from the accounts department, but I know from the traders who dealt with them that dealing with them was not easy. It was more of a dictatorship on their part. They dealt with us from a position of strength. They wanted to have the upper hand, and we were supposed to obey. They are just different. There was always a kind of megalomania about them. Everything was big with them, bolshoi."

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    Strančice, 04.12.2018

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    délka: 01:08:19
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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    Strančice, 28.09.2023

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    délka: 02:11:53
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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The Soviets were hard to come by. They always had to show that they had the upper hand

Marcela Ulrichová, circa 1959
Marcela Ulrichová, circa 1959
zdroj: witness

Marcela Ulrichová, née Máková, was born on 14 September 1939 in Prague into the family of Marie, née Horníková and Julius Mák. During the war, they lived in Všechromy in Central Bohemia with her mother‘s parents. After the war, the family moved to Osek in North Bohemia, where the father, originally a stonemason and then a railway employee, came from. Marcela recalls the experience of war in Všechromy and also describes the atmosphere and life in post-war Osek, which Nazi Germany seized during the war. She went to school with children from mixed families. German families were evicted. Her parents divorced in the post-war years, and her mother remarried to a native of Osek, miner Rudolf Adelt. In 1948, Marcela‘s brother was born from this marriage. Between 1954 and 1958, she graduated from the secondary school of economics in Teplice. She did not want to live in Osek and kept returning to her native region, where she married Jaroslav Ulrich in 1959. She followed him to Strančice, where they built a house. From 1960 to 1996, she worked as an accountant at Strojexport, located on Wenceslas Square in Prague. There, she took part in anti-occupation demonstrations between 1968 and 1969, for which she was expelled from the party in 1971, as was her husband. Their expulsion from the party made it impossible for them to travel abroad, and their daughter‘s further education was at risk. From 1998 to 2010, Marcela‘s husband, Jaroslav Ulrich, served as mayor of Strančice.