academic painter Libuše Pilařová-Kverková

“We lived in Heřmanova Street near to Trade Fair Palace and there used to be so-called Radiotrh in the place where now Parkhotel is. Those (Radiotrh- trans.) were wooden halls that belonged to the exhibition area premises. However, the Jews were assembled there before the transports during the war. And all of them went past us to that Radiotrh. And from there they took them to the Prague-Bubny railway station from there. And then they went to Lodz and different concentration camps. Because we lived in Letná and many Jewish families lived in Letná I had many (Jewish) schoolmates there. And only one of them came back... It was really horrible. They summoned them in groups and then took them down to the Prague-Bubny railway station. The staircase is there now as a memorial. And you could see families with children carrying backpacks and it was absolutely horrible.”

“So Arbeitseinsatz (forced labour). I was exceptionally lucky that I was sent to a land surveying office. It had German management but they did not work directly with us, those who trained us were Czechs. They trained us to draw topographic maps. We were fifty young women there. It had to be a perfect and accurate drawing. It was sent to printing and then to a front. So we were trained and some people did not manage to draw so precisely. However, those young men who were in charge of us did not care at all whether we were drawing coordinates for the Wehrmacht or whether we were going sunbathing up to the roof of Trade Fair Palace. Because air raid alerts were very often and one would go to a shelter. We used to go sunbathing up to the roof of Trade Fair Palace instead of hiding in the shelter. But I learned to draw precisely. It was a completely different style of drawing. We could draw freely at school but there we had to draw small sections using short lines which had to be exactly the same size.”

Letná is also connected with tragic events. In autumn 1942, the Radiotrh became a place where the Jewish population was forced to gather for the transports to Lodž and Theresienstadt. I saw them dragging their bundles and two-three days later marching to the Bubny Station. Non-Jewish relatives of soldiers serving abroad in western armies were first sent to the Kounic Colleges in Brno and later interned at the Svatobořice camp. I lost some of my Jewish friends and classmates who had been sitting next to me since the first class. Some of them returned and I have been friends with her ever since. Restrictive measures against the Jewish population kept increasing. I remember that at Letná, at the top, where there is the Ministry of the Interior now, this was before Slávia had burned out, there was an old tree, no idea if it was a horse chestnut or plaintree, the Jews would sit there because they were not allowed to go to the park.There was a shade and it was hot weather so they used to sit there under the tree.

I spent my childhood and youth at Letná, we lived at Heřmanova Street opposite the Veletržní Palace. The Letná plain was an ideal area for endless games and sports. There was a large football stadium of Slávie, 36 tennis courts which in winter were poured with wather and one could skate on the natural ice there, LTC Urban, Sporting Club, etc. Slávia burned down then. Under the bolshevik´s regime, the Letná plain was levelled off so that the military parades could be presented there.Until today it has not recovered, only the park has remained.

Unfortunately I do not know when he was capured or entered the legions, but knows for sure that it was in Rostov- on- Don where he witnessed the beginning of the Russian revolution. He was lying in the local hospital. Hearing that the Red Army was approaching, he ran away and that saved his life. The Red Army came to the hospital the next day, shot down all the Czechs, the Tzar officers and apart from that also the cadets at their school. The Czechs and Slovaks in the legions represented very well trained and equipped army. That´s why the Allies did not make any special effort to enable them to return home quickly.

My father was born in Austria but to Czech parents. In our family on my father´s side almost all male family members were gardeners. And not just ordinary ones – almost all in noblemen´s services: of the Fürstenbergs, at Schönbrunn, in Odessa, of the earl Konopka at Glogočov, In Kosovo at Dr Tarnowsky´s. Her greatgrandmother was Polish and her grandmother a governess at the Palfyi family. My father had some problems with his Polish grandmother of the charming name of Viktorie Vladislava of Baďoušek during the Protectorat. It was not easy to certify her Aryan origin papers across the border in the war time. These are words that my father said about his own father: He tried everything. Simply, he was an enterprising man. He even sent a patent of his to Vienna which was not accepted, because it had been invented by someone else before.

My father came from a family of nine children and when he was 16 (and his youngest brother 2), his father unexpectedly died. The family had to stop moving flats and his mother chose Prague as a new home for her children and herself. At the time, my father worked in Olšany as an assistent gardener, but longed for a better position: he left for Berlin in order to learn more about growing flowers. He came back right after the War broke out, was enlisted at the age of 20 and returned to Prague in 6 years. During the War his mother died and the oldest sister became a foster mother of her young siblings. From this time there is an evidence of a document stating that the Czech Land Committee issues an order to the Office Caring for the Poor Inhabitants to pay out to her the sum of 5,- Kč for each child..and she had to declare that she would ensure that the children attend school regularly, take care about them etc.. .under the supervision of a certain official.