Marie Vaňková

* 1938

  • “My boy was two years old. I had started putting him in a creche from when he was around eighteen [months - trans.] - that was before nursery school. So I was getting dressed in the morning to take him there, and there was some kind of a commotion in the street. People kept shouting: ‘They’re here! They’ve taken us!’ And so on. So I switched on the radio, and then I heard that something was going on. So I reckoned: ‘Look here, girl, you’re not going to work.’ The first thing that occurs to you is Mum and Dad, right. So I reckoned I had to go back home. So I took the boy. We went by tram, which was really, that’s still an odd feeling, even today. The people were talking, right, swearing. Afraid of what will happen. So I got home, our mum hugged us all together and said: ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’ So we lived there for two or three weeks. I didn’t go to work, I phoned my work. And at the time they excuse me. So then I only heard from those who did work, what the situation was like there. They were actually in Wenceslaus Square, as well, right, shooting up at the Museum and the Radio [House]. But they were also in the street where I was, Charvátová. That was the Škoda House, on National Avenue. They happened to have some scaffolding up at the time. So they said: ‘Man, really, we had them here as well. These types came here too.’ Back then they were really an odd assortment, I don’t know, either youngsters, or gaffers, like really old ones. They were shoddy, really, they were a sorry sight.”

  • “We lived in Suchdol from ’38 to ’42. I was four years old. All I can remember is one incident that happened when the Germans were already here. We didn’t have our own water, we had to get it from the school, where the pump was. And one time we were on our way there, and the Germans were already here. I don’t know if the schools were closed yet or if they had some kind of centre there, where they were quartered. That was my first meeting with a German. I thought he was such a nice gentleman. I guess he was. He started stroking me on the hair, asking what my name was and that he had a little girl like me as well. Well, so I thought, being the age I was back then, that they were all like that. Well, I guess I didn’t quite work out like that.”

  • “And then, seeing that I attended the technical school, they had a hobby there, they set up a small shooting range in the factory. And because they’d go there after work, well then, he wanted me as a look-out, so he said: ‘Look, you’ll come with me and you’ll do some shooting, too.’ So I started shooting, and I was quite good at it. Then we started going to various shooting ranges in the vicinity, even outside of Prague. I got all the way to the national championships in Brno - that was still under the Czechoslovak Republic. And if you ask me when it was, I don’t know because I really just can’t remember any more. And which place I got, I don’t know that either, but I have the feeling it was third at most.”

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    ZŠ K Milíčovu, 16.11.2017

    (audio)
    délka: 36:14
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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I don’t belong here any more, I still live in the way things used to be

vankova_doboveII.jpg (historic)
Marie Vaňková

Marie Vaňková was born on 23 December 1938 in Prague, and when she was small her family often moved. Her father worked at Pařík, a factory that produced spare parts for motorcycles. She remembers the end of the war, the liberation by the Red Army, and how the women and girls hid from the soldiers - like her cousin and aunt, who hid in the pigeon loft. Her father introduced her to shooting sports, and she even competed at the national championships. She graduated from a secondary technical school and was employed at the Škoda Works, where she worked her whole life. She married in 1959. She was strongly affected by the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies in August 1968, which she - as many other people - felt as a tragedy.