Anna Smržová

* 1927

  • "There was a man called Plny right here at the border, at the very border, and he had children. His son still lives here, Jindra, he is seventy. He said, 'Dad was upset once.' The Poles bullied them so badly, bullied them badly, and he said, 'I've had enough!' He hitched up a wooden carriage, took what he could, his horses, he took everything that fitted into the carriage, crossed the borders and never returned. He left his house and everything else there. It was the same with everyone. Who didn't have a carriage, took backpacks and some things and walked to Czechia."

  • "I can't say. They treated us well during the war, and we treated them well after the war. Nobody seen it like: You're Germans, you're Czechs. I can't say that. Not only people from Nouzin were running way, also those from Bukoviny, from Stroužný, they ran further down to Machov. "

  • "Unfortunately, the Poles occupied Nuzin. They came from the hills and they were completely flabbergasted. There were a lot of soldiers guarding the borders. Not us, but the Poles guarded the borders a lot. The Poles started to run away to us. Here, at every house was a porch for the elderly called "sednicka", and all of them were occupied by the families from Nouzin. They got involved, they all knew Czech. I can not tell. The youth got involved, they went to the factories, the integrated to a great extent. I cannot say anyone was against them or bullied them.

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    Machovská Lhota, 17.01.2017

    (audio)
    délka: 01:51:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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Families from Kladsko fled to us after the war, they could not stand the bullying by the Polish soldiers

Anna Smržová, around 1944
Anna Smržová, around 1944
zdroj: Dobová - archiv pamětnice, Současná - Michal Bureš

Anna Smržová, née Ševců, was born on February 5, 1927, in Machovská Lhota, in close proximity to the then Czech-German (now Czech-Polish) border. During the First World War, her father Rudolf Ševců studied as a gardener in the Broumov monastery. He married Anna Rücker, whose family owned a general store in Machov. They gradually gave birth to three daughters, of whom only the last Anna survived. She attended school in Machov for eight years and then transferred to a family school in Hronov. After the second year, her studies were interrupted during the Second World War and she began working as a women‘s tailor in nearby Bezděkov nad Metují. At that time, her father worked as a gardener in neighbouring Nouzín, which already lay beyond the former state border, in the so-called Czech Corner in Kłodzko. Until 1945, the territory fell under the then German Empire, after 1945 it fell to Poland. Anna remembers the post-war movements and integration of the Kladno Czechs. After May 1945 she started working in a tailor‘s plant in Broumov. In September 1947, she married Jan Smrž. At the time of filming, she lived in Machovská Lhota (2017).