Marie Vařáková

* 1942

  • "When Stalin died, I know that, I remember that, we had to, as pupils you can't stay in school at break time, so we were ordered to behave politely and quietly, that there was a state mourning. Well, and we didn't say anything then, we had those nine years, so no... [...] And then the Gottwald who died, we had to go, there was a cross at the lower end, and you went to the cross, so somehow the... how do you say it nowadays when you pray for the dead. At that cross, even with those kids, well the teachers had to go there with us."

  • "I guess it [the trauma] was because when my brother-in-law died, they all, our family, they all died of strokes and my brother-in-law, who was two years older than me, when it happened to him and we called the doctor, he was talking to me afterwards outside and he was saying that it's not possible for the whole family, how many of them there were, and that everybody, that the trauma must have been terrible for them from the Paseky from that war."

  • "And she came up on the hill, she said she lit the stove, they had a well there a little bit, they went to get water, so she went to get water and came back and the cottage was surrounded by the Gestapo. They were wearing white overalls, and the head of the Gestapo, they say he climbed up into the attic, and as he was coming back, he put the lid on his head and he rode down the stairs. It wouldn't have mattered so much that he got a ride, but he got dirty with the calf's excrement. And he was so furious, they say, that he turned the overalls into complete ribbons, and the others had a great laugh, you might say. They laughed so hard because he kept sniffing himself. And I don't know if I should say it, like he just said to her, 'You fucking Czech!' And she said, it will stop with time […]: ‘I didn’t know if they would shoot me, let me go, or what would happen to me.’ And that the feeling, when everyone laughed at him, she couldn’t hold back either and laughed too. And when he saw that, holding his weapon, he smashed her jaw with the butt and broke her ribs so badly that she was left unconscious on the ground.That why the bebe, he was showing why it was tied there? And she said, in hindsight [...], 'I didn't know if they were going to shoot me or let me go, and what was going to happen to me.' And that the feeling, how they all laughed at him, that she couldn't hold back and laughed too, and he, seeing that he had the gun, he smashed her jaw with the butt of the gun and broke her ribs so that she was left lying unconscious."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Lačnov, 31.03.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:04:19
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Zlín, 24.03.2024

    (audio)
    délka: 01:28:15
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

My husband‘s family survived both Nazi and Communist persecution

First Holy Communion, 1950
First Holy Communion, 1950
zdroj: Archive of the witness

Marie Vařáková, née Krajčová, was born on 16 November 1944 in Studlov, Wallachia. Later she married into the family of Jiří and Rozálie Vařák, who at the end of the Second World War experienced the burning of the settlement of Vařákovy Paseky, when they, including their young children, were threatened with death at the hands of the Nazis, who were taking revenge on all those who helped the partisans of the First Czechoslovak Brigade of Jan Žižka in the region. This family was also affected by the communist regime, which in the political trial of the Světlana - Jeseník group sentenced their father-in-law, Jiří Vařák, to 14 years in prison for providing a key resistance fighter from this cell, Alois Šimar, with lodging and weapons. Jiří Vařák served five years, then in 1955 he was released under an amnesty granted by President Antonín Zápotocký. Marie Vařák grew up in poor circumstances - her parents, František and Františka Krajčovi, were forest workers and owned only a small farm. In primary school, Marie experienced a bizarre situation when, after the death of then President Klement Gottwald, the children had to pray for him at the cross at the end of the village. After school, instead of going to school or high school, she went straight to work - as a worker in the Igla factory in Valašské klobouky. At the time of normalisation, she joined the Czechoslovak Women‘s Union, thanks to which she personally met President Gustáv Husák at the end of the 1970s. She was also a member of the Lacnovo National Committee. At the time of the interview, Marie Vařáková was living in Lačnov in Wallachia, where she worked as a guide at the Vařákovy Paseky Museum.