Marie Vávrová

* 1939

  • "He was always worried, Daddy, that they would take Mummy and the children away. And when I went to the business school, I had German language there, and when I said, 'Mummy, I don't know, what do you think?' - 'No, please, don't ask me to do anything, I won't give you any advice.' She was afraid that we would have problems. She didn't go out to run errands, even though she spoke fluent Czech. She spoke Czech, but she couldn't write Czech. She was afraid, she was betrayed by everything. From when they had to deport, she was afraid."

  • "Uncle Vena came to visit. He thought Planá was the same as it used to be. [In the past], he used to go to the pub and pay for the whole village, his friends all liked him. That time, he came here with the whole family, and we drove from Planá to the airport. And he says to my husband: 'Stop, stop, take a photo of us here by the airport.' My husband took out the camera, and a soldier immediately came to him, and he called the commander right away. By coincidence, the commander was from Lišov, a friend of my husband's. My husband was taken in for about two hours, they ripped the film out of the camera and told him to get out immediately! My uncle was terribly disappointed that it went like that, next time we didn't take any photos. We went to see my brother, he was in the military in Beroun. That time, my uncle came with his daughter to Prague to see the Castle, and we went to Beroun to see him at the military. My uncle wanted to see him, but I told him, 'Uncle, don't go there, to the barracks!' - 'No, we'll go there, I'll buy him something.' So we went there, and then my brother had problems, that it was a foreign car and why it was there, and that they didn't care it was his uncle. He couldn't even talk to him."

  • "Until I was six years old, I had a beautiful life. I lived in love, there was harmony between my parents at home, and my dad's parents accepted my mum very well. We had a nice childhood. Then, the whole family suffered a big hit, the expulsion. Mummy was tormented. She didn't know where they were, where they ended up, or if she would ever see them again. She cried all the time. Once it calmed down, she found out what happened to them, they got in touch, and she was even able to visit them, although at a cruel price - those were the house visits, my mum passed away. We could have started visiting them, but our lives were already disrupted. Before that, we lived in great fear all the time, we were afraid. Then we were afraid of the communists, terrified. I was at school, the boys went to the military, they were constantly getting checked."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    České Budějovice, 13.04.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:29:44
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

After my family was deported, I felt like I was living in a shell

Marie Vávrová in 2023
Marie Vávrová in 2023
zdroj: Post Bellum

Marie Vávrová, née Dvořáková, was born on 11 March 1939 into a mixed marriage. Her mother, Kateřina Dvořáková, née Tibitanzlová, was from a German family that farmed on a large farm in Planá near České Budějovice. Kateřina married Josef Dvořák and moved to his farm in Lišov, where Marie was born. Little Marie often stayed with her grandfather and grandmother in Planá and spent an idyllic childhood there. Her life in a close-knit family with many relatives ended with the Deportation in 1946. Thanks to her marriage to a Czech, Marie Vávrová‘s mother was the only one in the family who could remain in Bohemia. All the other relatives were deported to Germany. The individual family members were scattered throughout Germany, so at first, even the deported relatives had no news of each other. The relatives in Bohemia knew nothing about their fate for several years. They did not even know that the grandfather, Martin Tibitanzl, did not even arrive in Germany because he died in the wagon on the way there. They only received the first news, thanks to the Red Cross, in 1952. In the 1950s, Marie graduated from a two-year business school. In 1956, at a very young age, she married Tomáš Vávra and subsequently had two children: a daughter, Zdena, and a son, Petr. From her youth until her retirement, she worked in the Sfinx company in České Budějovice, first in dispatching and later as a cashier. After her retirement, Marie devoted herself primarily to her family, helping to look after her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She became a widow in 2014. She lived her whole life in her birthplace in Lišov near České Budějovice.