Božena Vlčková

* 1958

  • "Then there was a carnival for the kids. There was a children's day at the playground. My mother baked and cooked for everyone. When the gypsies still lived there, she gave them clothes. My father used to scold her for that, but she always dressed them. Or when those kids were running around in the winter naked, she bathed them and dressed them. She was very empathic."

  • "People used to be much nicer to each other no matter their political believe or status. For example, the headmaster and the doctor used to come to our home to play cards with our parents. The class differences weren't as visible as if we lived inland. The doctors would come, the nurses would come, always meeting at our place. It's true that sometimes they'd bring pills or something, but my mother always cooked and baked and hosted them all. They met a lot at our place to play cards ... There was no distinction whether it was a doctor, or a teacher, or an ordinary worker. Because they were all in the same boat."

  • "The Secret Police always came, I don't know where their car was parked. They wore leather coats. They rang the bell, or banged on the door, or broke down the door. They went around the house and looked into the closets. They threw everything out, including flour. And my mother was already sick, so they just yelled and yelled. They tide my father up, we never saw that, we just always heard the bangs and shouting."

  • "My father had some contacts, who used to bring something. We never saw what, because we always had to go away, or our mother would lock us upstairs. So we didn't know what it was, but then our father left and went to see them off across the border [to Poland]."

  • "My mother was versatile, she probably went through a lot too. So she always made sure we had something to eat and to keep us warm. And Ota Konopčík said that when he used to come to Bílá Voda, when my father was imprisoned and my mother didn't have money for milk, she used to sweeten the water and we used to drink only water for breakfast in the morning, warm and sweetened water. Those Poles knew how to cook something out of nothing and she knew how to process everything around her, so she always had something to eat for us. But I say, we were children from the village, so we ate what grew around."

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    Prlov, 06.12.2019

    (audio)
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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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Family comes first

Němčice, Božena Vlčková, circa 1973
Němčice, Božena Vlčková, circa 1973
zdroj: Archiv Boženy Vlčkové

Božena Vlčková was born on 3 July 1958 in Šumperk to her mother Božena Mézlová, née Bagiňská, and her father Jaroslav Mézl. Her father fought in the Czechoslovak foreign army in France in 1940. Later he got to the Protectorate, where he cooperated with the partisans. After his resistance activities were discovered, he began to cooperate with the Gestapo in an attempt to save his life. He was imprisoned in 1945 until the mid-1950s. Her mother joined the anti-communist resistance after the war. In the late 1940s she was arrested and imprisoned too. So they met for the first time in court. Božena waited for Jaroslav‘s release from prison until 1956, then they got married and moved to northern Moravia. They had four children. Jaroslav Mézl was imprisoned repeatedly in the 1960s, and the family suffered from material deprivation. From her childhood, Božena remembers the visits of State Secret Police (StB) officers to their home. At the end of the 1960s, she lost both her parents, her mother succumbed to a serious illness, and her father took his own life. However, there is a rumour in the family that Jaroslav Mézl may have been murdered by the Secret Police. After the death of their parents, the siblings were separated. Božena lived with her twin sister Anna with an aunt in Němčice near Holešov. Later she was trained in Brno as a baker - confectioner. In 1977 she married Josef Vlček and had three children, a daughter Lucie and two sons Pavel and Zdeněk. The family still lives in Holešov, where she worked in a bakery and later ran a local grocery store. At the time of filming (2019), Božena Vlčková was retired.