"I sat on that counter. I liked to go there. Now he [Z. M. Kuděj] came and said: 'You live there, on that counter? Get your ass out of there... I am supposed to put bread and rolls on it now, right?' Grandma said: 'Mr. writer, look, she is wearing panties and she is dressed. And if you saw how clean her mother is, she has everything new every day. I am angry with her mother for that. She is washing and cleaning all the time.’ He said: ‘Come down, do not do that here!' Grandma said to him: 'Mr. writer, we do not have any buns here today yet.' And I used to bring him the buns. Well, he would say, 'Bring me the buns then.' He would always give me a penny for it. He did not pay there, but he always gave something to me."
"There was one big room downstairs and then two smaller ones and one here. There were three tenants and upstairs it was all Mr. writer's. There was a window on the side to the attic, so they made a door out of that, built a wooden staircase next to it and then a straight bit [landing]. He had a bucket there and he used to go and pee in that and pour it out into the garden. Sometimes I would go there and he would have a full bucket there. But I never went in his rooms because my grandmother said: 'Never go in there! I'm sure it is a mess in there.' My mum said that too. But as soon as I got in there, he said: 'Is that you? Are you bringing me buns?' - 'I am!' - 'Wait here, I will bring you something.' Sometimes he would give me something bigger. My mother said: 'Do not spend it and save it for the fair. He spoils you with that candy in vain.'"
"And I was running and he was picking mushrooms. He used to carry a rucksack, a stick and something else in his hand. I met him outside the village, there was nowhere to turn back. As I was running, he set the stick, I stopped because I was afraid, I would fall. He said to me: 'Where are you going?' I said I was going to my mother and grandmother, they were weeding potatoes there. ‘I saw them there, I was looking at them, they are really hard-working and you are going to help them. You are such a hard-working little girl too. And you are pretty. If I could paint like Zdeněk, I would paint you.' I was wearing a red skirt and a white blouse with a bow. 'You look nice, you are such a pretty girl. Go on, then!' - 'I am in a hurry, Mr. writer.' - 'Go on, then, so you do not get scolded by those two workers!'"
Stanislava Rezlerová, née Žáčková, was born on 21 January 1930 in Radostovice in Vysočina. Her father worked as a stonemason in local quarries and her grandfather Jan Žáček opened a convenience store after the World War I. Even the writer Zdeněk Matěj Kuděj used to shop there when he lived in Radostovice during the World War II. But the shop ceased to exist during the German occupation. The witness studied at the primary school in Dolní Město and later in Světlá nad Sázavou. She was apprenticed as a dressmaker and for few years after the end of the World War II she lived and worked in Prague where she witnessed the 1948 Czechoslovak coup d‘état. Together with her husband she returned to Radostovice where she still lived during the recording (March 2022). She celebrated her 90th birthday in January 2020. She died in September 1st, 2024.
Jan Žáček's convenience store in Radostovice, the gradfather of the witness, the witness is held by her parents in the photo. From the left: grandmother and grandfather Žáček, uncle Stanislav Žáček, witness with mother and father Josef Žáček, ca. 1931
Jan Žáček's convenience store in Radostovice, the gradfather of the witness, the witness is held by her parents in the photo. From the left: grandmother and grandfather Žáček, uncle Stanislav Žáček, witness with mother and father Josef Žáček, ca. 1931
Photo of stonemasons, sitting from the left: Josef Žáček (father), Jindřich Žáček (uncle), Stanislav Novák, standing from the left: Josef Štěpánek, Josef Vaňkát, someone from Lipnička, Stanislav Žáček (uncle), the last one was not identified
Photo of stonemasons, sitting from the left: Josef Žáček (father), Jindřich Žáček (uncle), Stanislav Novák, standing from the left: Josef Štěpánek, Josef Vaňkát, someone from Lipnička, Stanislav Žáček (uncle), the last one was not identified
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