Bohuslava Kouřilová

“After the war, my father worked at the city council. He had to leave and take up a job in a dairy because he had not been vetted. After two years he transferred to Impregna for good, working in maintenance. We knew the secret police was spying on us. There was a car and a motorbike parked at the tennis courts with men hanging around who normally wouldn’t. Every fortnight, secret police aides were checking up on us in our place. We were lucky that their dog did not make it up to our place because Mr. Pludek was hiding there as were one other married couple. The dog would have discovered them. An inspection with a dog even came on Christmas eve.”

“After 1948, Mr. Bartoš and his family had to leave the country to avoid a bad fate. He would have had paid for everything he did and said because they issued an arrest warrant for him. So the Bartoš’s emigrated abroad with an 18-month-old boy. Jiří Štokman ran away too because as a soldier he did not want to collaborate and he would have been imprisoned anyway. Only Mr. Šikola stayed in the country, spending five to six years in prison. We from Sokol looked after his family. We would collect and send them money and food because Mrs. Šikola was not employed and had a young boy. Our families could meet but only under supervision because our house was under surveillance to prevent us from doing somethingwrong. We corresponded with Messrs. Bartoš, Štokman and Skopal in America but we had to bring the letters to a secret police mailbox in Holešov. They would have a look on what was written in there and send it. Likewise, they would check the letters arriving from America, seal them and send them to us.”

“When someone came [for a visit] and [the person] didn’t have time to hide, he was in the bedroom for instance, what I did was I made myself a doll’s room [...] and no one was allowed through that. In front of the door, yes, in front of the door which they were behind - and I sat there playing, and no one was allowed to pass through, because they’d knock my toys down.”

“Well, and then the paratroopers came, and they even broadcast from us, and the interesting thing is that we found out that the Germans couldn’t locate them because of the lines nearby. The railway line passed by from one side and the high-voltage line from the other. And our house was in between these, so it was all blocked out. Except that the surrounding houses, their lights would flash when we broadcast. But that was during the war, so no one paid it much attention. But after the war some high brass came to have a look at it, and they found out that it was the only radio transmitter which remained operating for the whole time. So it was good that they came to Bystřice. (That they came to you.) At least they survived.”

“They took him to Hradiště twice and returned him three days later. They threw him in front of the door. He was spent. Terrible. So my granddad had to go for the doctor. [The doctor] tried to put him together again. That happened twice, and the third time he stood on trial in Nový Jičín, and there he was protected by a friend of his from military service. The friend said he’d vouch for him - he was a Party member. He said he’d vouch for him and that he wouldn’t do anything. And from then on they let him be. Because if a good man vouched for him, that meant if a Party member vouched for him, then they...”

“Well, and that was the first thing we did when we got there. We started digging a bunker. We made a mound in the garden, where they were. (And that was somewhere in the ground floor?) They only had a ground floor, with a large loft above it. So in the ground floor, in the corner, one by one meter it was I think, or I’m not sure, I can’t remember any more. And that was covered by the floor which had been removed. It was exactly between the beams. That was covered with a sheet of metal because of the stove, so it didn’t burn through; and something on top of that, and then the stove. And the wood pile was ready right by it, so that when they saw the Germans approaching on the hill by the bridge, when they saw them standing with their cars, they went and started a fire in the stove. First we had to climb down under, and then the fire was started - no one wanted to move the hot stove. It might not even have occurred to them that there could be something underneath. We had a bunker in the kitchen at home too. It was right by the door. That was better because it made a different sound when you stepped on it, so that didn’t matter because the next steps masked it. But if the bunker had been in a different place and the steps had resounded differently here and there, they would’ve discovered it. (Dig you dig that bunker when the first person came to hide?) We dug that too, yes, it was behind the door. You opened it, climbed inside, threw the carpet over it. (Was there a trapdoor?) There was a trapdoor with hinges. You lifted it and everyone crammed inside. But the loft was better, because it had a double roof. It never occurred to anyone that there might be a double roof. It was nailed over with cardboard, inside and out, and there were some old carpets on top of it and some planks. The loft could fit a lot of people, it could. We removed the ladder and no one could climb up.”

“Mr Sobota had a textile firm, he imported cloth from France, Germany, and he made dresses, neck-ties. He also helped a lot of people over the border after 1948, before the confiscated the factory. He couldn’t do it after that. He helped people out of the country. There were a lot of people hiding at our place after ’48. No one knew about it. They even used two young people who tried to get a hiding from us. They wanted to bait my parents to prove they were working against our republic. They even used weapons, the shot at my mum, but she managed to hide in time, so they didn’t hit her. She was holding my brother in her arms at the time, so that was the last thing, a test of sorts. Except we reckoned that if they’d have known who all was hiding there, where and for how long, they’d have locked Mum and Dad up for sure. But then again, they did it because it was necessary.”