“Our mum found a maid, she was German. She was an unlucky girl, she’d escaped here to be with some soldier, and she got stuck in Prague somehow. I can just remember, when I came home from work, I worked in Vinohrady, she asked what the situation was like outside. I said: ‘It seems the Germans are losing.’ But I didn’t know that for sure. She sat up, and although she was working as our servant, she had some little pack bundled up, probably in case she’d make a run for it. And as the soldiers started fleeing from the hospital [Na Františku - ed.], they fled through our street. And she, when she saw that, she immediately grabbed her pack and fled after them.”
“When the bombing began, we were in Lazarská Street. They dropped bombs right in front of our house. Fortunately, we got away ‘scot-free”, but it killed some people in the house next door. I can’t say that I ever experienced peaceful times.”
“[Václav - ed.] was mostly in Příbram District, there were some mines there. I remember when I went to visit him, they happened to bring in some convicts in this one big lorry. So we waited there. There was a set time for how long he could speak [with us - ed.]. A lot of prison guards also came with them.”
Celé nahrávky
1
Praha 7, Domov s pečovatelskou službou, 27.04.2016
To be able to make a sacrifice for other people in important moments in life
Jana Obadálková, née Dobíhalová, was born on 7 September 1927 in Prague-Košíře. Her parents owned a prospering butcher‘s shop. She joined the Sokol sports movement when she was four years old, in 1931. After completing lower and upper primary school (the Old Town girls‘ municipal school in Prague 1) and graduating from the Higher Business Academy in Prague in 1946, she joined the Czechoslovak People‘s Party (a moderately conservative Christian party - trans.). When the Communists came to power she was expelled from Sokol, and in 1948 she experienced the arrest and custody of Václav Obadálek, whom she later married. During the time of his custody she pretended to be his fiancée, and she visited him and supported him. This formed a bond between them, which culminated in their marriage. Her wedding to Václav Obadálek in 1959 was carried out by proxy. The groom, who was in prison at the time, was represented by his brother Vojtěch. When Václav was released in 1960, the couple had a Catholic wedding in a church in Prague-Zlíchov. They had two sons, Václav and Jan. She worked as an office clerk in sales and finance, and pricing and taxes, as an accountant for production, materials, and wages, and as a booking clerk at producer cooperatives. After her retirement she lived in Prague, she now lives in a retirement home in Prague 7.
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