Božena Vodrážková

* 1923

  • “I opened the package and inside there was a letter and a beautiful drawing of a man and a girl. It was written there that he loved me and that he would like to meet me when the war was over. I told him that I didn’t want anything, I didn’t want to date anybody. I was receiving the letters from one Polish man – a prisoner, who was working as a barber for the Germans. I sent him a message that I entreated him not to write me and send me packages anymore because I wanted to live to see the end of the war.”

  • “We had a freistunde (free time), and the weather was beautiful, the sun was setting, and these women told me: ´God loves you. He loves all the people, and he loves you too.´ I was happy that the Lord loved me because I love Him too, and I try to be good and not to hurt anybody. As I was looking at this amazing sunset, I thought: ´Who made this? The Creator made it. For it’s not possible that man, who has wisdom, intellect, and all this, could originate here without the Creator.´”

  • “They were there for about three days. I was telling them fairy tales and giving my time to them, caressing them, and then they left. It was a boy and a girl, little children.”

  • The lyrics are quite difficult to understand and they do not correspond with the official version of the song in Polish.

  • “I remember poor Mr. Liška. We all had to open the windows in the morning, so that those who occupied us could see everything clearly. Our window was placed low and he walked by and said: ´Brožová, what will happen to us, what will happen to us?!´ There was such despair in his voice. He hanged himself, he committed suicide. They had a beautiful little son, Mireček, and Mireček was able to read newspapers. Such a young boy and he could already read newspapers!”

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    Kladno, 19.03.2011

    (audio)
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There was a beautiful sunset over Ravensbrück, and I knew that there was the Creator behind all this

Vodrážková Božena
Vodrážková Božena
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

  Božena Vodrážková, née Brožová, was born in Prague in 1923. Her father Josef Kalous died when she was a little girl, and her mother then served on farms in various villages in Central Bohemia: in Stehelčeves, Makotřasy and eventually in Lidice. She had a relationship with Russian emigrant Vasil Generalov. In 1942 Božena Vodrážková met the same fate as the other inhabitants of Lidice. She and her mother were deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp and her stepfather was shot together with other men from Lidice. Her brother was not registered in Lidice; he lived in Germany at that time, and he thus evaded the tragedy. In the concentration camp, Božena Vodrážková joined a group of imprisoned women who were Jehovah‘s Witnesses and she became a believer in this Christina church. After the war she returned to Kladno and later also to the reconstructed village of Lidice. She worked there as a gardener and she brought up two sons. At present she lives in Kladno.