“Then came the horror, when they started murdering the Jews. So he and his son disappeared, and she alone would come in the night and knock on our door. We were terribly afraid because if anyone saw it, we could be executed. It was a horrible situation, but then she disappeared, she stopped coming. We have no idea what happened to her, because we were so terribly afraid. The Banderites had us in their sights because we were Czechs. We had awful trouble with them - they would come in the night, wake us up, and Dad would have to go to the smithy to shoe their horses. Mum sewed them these white clothes and coats so they wouldn’t be visible in the winter. They also came to us for food. So we were under constant surveillance.”
“My grandmother’s sister married off there. The family was called Anděl, and they had a sweet shop there. So they had a good life in Malín. Alas, only my uncle escaped with his life. And now I’ll tell you how. When the Germans burst into Malín, with all the commotion going on, Granny’s sister went to hide in the garden with her husband and their son. They lay down among the poppies. Because they had heard gunfire and screaming. Except Granny’s sister remembered that she hadn’t let the cow loose, so she went to untie her, so they wouldn’t steal her or shoot her. But as she was leaving the cowshed, the Germans shot her with a machine gun in the yard. [My uncle] stayed hidden in the poppy field and was the only one of my relatives to survive. They killed and burned the whole family. That was also terribly sad.”
Emilie Konečná, née Doležalová, was born on 3 March 1933 in the village of Koryta, Dubno District, in Volhynia in what was then Poland (now Ukraine). Unlike most local Czech families, the Doležals lived in a Ukrainian village. Emilie‘s father worked as a blacksmith and her mother was a seamstress. They lived in a large house, which included a small estate and a shop. They rented that out together with a flat to one Jewish couple. Emilie remembers that they had a son about ten years of age, but she does not remember their names or surname. The Jewish family disappeared after Volhynia was occupied by German soldiers in June 1941. Only the wife came back, whom the Doležals secretly supplied with food. But she also disappeared in the end, and they never saw her again. Emilie Konečná also experienced the havoc caused by Banderites, who hanged several local men in the middle of the village as a cautionary example. On 13 July 1943 two of her relatives died when German units ravaged Český Malín - the Nazis brutally murdered 374 Czech inhabitants and burned the village to the ground. In 1947 the family remigrated to Czechoslovakia and settled down in Petrov nad Desnou in Šumperk District. In 1955 Emilie married Stanislav Konečný and moved to Bludov, where she still lives as of 2017. Emilie Konečná died in 2018.
Family in Volyn. From left to left are parents Anežka and Antonín Doležal and uncle Vladimír Doležel. Below the grandparents of Marie and Antonin Dolezal
Family in Volyn. From left to left are parents Anežka and Antonín Doležal and uncle Vladimír Doležel. Below the grandparents of Marie and Antonin Dolezal
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
