Mgr. Milena Cubrová

* 1925

  • "He sailed for four days, and when he couldn't swim any more and thought he was going to die, he saw a boat in the distance, so he swam to it again. It was a ship carrying coal between Poland and Spain on the Mediterranean. He was afraid of being sent back to Czech, so he pretended he was English and that they had had some sort of a bet and that it had gone so badly. So the captain took him up on the ship and brother survived to Livorno, where he begged that the French consul be called. He was very cordial and helped him. He was a very amiable gentleman and they were friends for a long time afterwards. My brother wrote to Jeanette, who sent the money and all the papers, and they made it possible for him to cross the two frontiers, that is, the Italian and the French, into France."

  • "I was very quiet so that the communists wouldn't pick me like some of my classmates. I graduated with a master's degree and went to work in my uncle's pharmacy, he had a private pharmacy in Prague. I remember that his wife got sick and then died early because she had a hard time when the communists took his pharmacy away."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Praha, 07.09.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:13:21
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Brother sailed for four days, almost didn‘t survive

Milena Cubrová in the 1960s
Milena Cubrová in the 1960s
zdroj: witness

Milena Cubrová, née Schürer, was born on 26 October 1925 in Písek as the eldest of four children of JUDr. Miroslav Schürer, a notary, and Růžena, née Smetana. She spent most of her childhood and youth in Polná near Havlíčkův Brod and later in Kutná Hora. She graduated from the Kutná Hora Grammar School in 1943. In 1944 she experienced the bombing in Pardubice, where she worked in a pharmacy and lived in a residential area in the family of a pharmacist. From 1946 to 1948 she studied pharmacy at the Faculty of Science. After the war, her family was affected by the repressive policies of the communist regime. After 1948, her brother Přemysl was deployed to the PTP (Auxiliary Technical Battalions). Her uncle, a pharmacist, was deprived of his trade by the communists, which led to his wife‘s untimely death. Father Miroslav could not find a suitable job because of his anti-communist views. Milena‘s brother Přemysl emigrated to France in 1971 via Algeria, where he travelled across the sea in a pedal boat, according to the story. After her brother‘s emigration, Milena was interrogated by State Security and was unaware of his fate for several weeks. Milena‘s husband was not allowed to travel abroad on business because of his brother-in-law‘s emigration. Milena was not allowed to visit her brother Přemysl in France until 1982, after her husband‘s death. Her brother never returned to Czechoslovakia, he died in France in 2007. In 2023 Milena Cubrová was living in Prague.