Anděla Černá

* 1935

  • “In forty-three, there were really awful droughts, so we didn’t have enough fodder, and Dad started going all the way to Slavonice by the Austrian borders. There was a farmer there, because the Germans had already left, so he’d taken one of the farms they left there. I know that Dad and other farmers from Vranín rode to him by horse. They’d leave at two or three o’clock and come back dragging two big cartloads of hay or straw because the cattle had actually started chewing at branches from the forest. The drought was as awful as this year’s, but no harvest. Everyone held on to their cattle, so they wouldn’t have to sell them or slaughter them. That Kadrnka [Eduard Kadrnka - ed.] was a large farmer of some kind, who’d taken it up there, or it was his property, I don’t know, and he guided people across the border, and that’s when it started. Dad was also somehow in touch with his brother-in-law. He was a military doctor in Znojmo. So they managed to get some high-ranked soldiers out [of the country], and that Kadrnka lived on the borders, so he knew about it. That’s how it started, and Dad was part of it somehow.”

  • “On Thursday the chairman of the district national committee came to say we were to move out the next morning. We moved out, and that put an end to it. Everything stayed there and we were gone. It all stayed there. We even had decorators around that day because we were to celebrate our church anniversary on Sunday. As we were decorating, scraping the walls down, we swept it all up into little heaps. We were provided with only two cars. When we found out about it, we were all afraid we were going to Siberia. We had no idea where we were going. Grandpa worked on the farm. I was attending grammar school, but I had to stop after a year because we got a new headmaster who was a Comrade. Before that we had Doctor Javůrek, who was excellent, and he stood up for me because I was a good student. And [the new headmaster] said: ‘Well, Nevoralová, I don’t know if you’ll be able to continue your studies.’ And Mum said: ‘They started deporting people throughout Moravia, we have to fulfil all our quotas so they don’t evict us. So you have to stay at home and work.’ So Grandpa and I kept the farm. I ploughed, I rode the horses, I did everything. At sixteen, because I stayed at home. Grandpa was about seventy-five years old, he was born in 1883. So we fulfilled everything and delivered goodness knows what. So we reckoned that we’d at least hold on to the farm. All Mum could think of was to hold on to the farm, except we didn’t. So he came on Thursday, there was to be the church anniversary on Sunday, so we were decorating. All the neighbours came over, and we had wood ready for a barn. Dad had wanted to build a barn. So we cut that building timber up and we took it with us into the mountains. A carful of wood and a small ‘Vincek’ stove - because Grandpa said that if we were heading to Siberia... They didn’t take Grandpa, because he wasn’t registered with us. So we left him sitting on a chair in our empty house. Mum sat on top of the car. We drove through Brno on 7 November, when there was a manifestation there. The weather was bad, it was snowing, raining. We came to Lanškroun. There was so much snow that the cars barely got through. There was one spook with us in the car. My brother and I could sit inside the cab, Mum sat on top, but under the tarp. Grandpa had given her a fur coat, so she wouldn’t freeze. They brought us to Hynčice at eleven o’clock because the heavy snowfall meant we had to be pulled along by horses. We had to report to the farm in Staré Město, and we were already assigned houses where we would all live.”

  • “I could swim since I was four, so could my brother. I was in the pond every day. Say, when we sweated away on the field, we’d go for a swim as late as ten o’clock. We still had to bring a jugful to water the cucumbers in the garden and all because our folks came back from the field, Mum had to go milk, Dad took care of the cattle and the horses. It was a busy from dawn till dusk.”

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    Šumperk, 01.09.2015

    (audio)
    duration: 01:38:40
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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They had all their lines rehearsed, but no one anticipated that there would be death sentences

Anděla Černá (Nevoralová)
Anděla Černá (Nevoralová)
photo: archiv pamětnice

Anděla Černá, born Andela Nerovalova, was born on 22 June 1935 in Vranín near Moravské Budějovice. Her parents owned a farm in the middle of this little village with twelve acres of fields. Her father, Jan Nevoral, was imprisoned in Jihlava for eight months during the war for the illegal milling of flour. Her father was strongly opposed to the events of February 1948, when the Communist Party took over all power in the country and, among other things, began using repressive means to enforce the collectivisation of agriculture and the related founding of united agricultural cooperatives (UAC). At the first opportunity Jan Nevoral joined a resistance group formed around Gustav Smetana, which tried to work towards the overthrow of the regime. On 17 June 1951 he was arrested by State Security, and on 19 and 21 May 1952 he and another eleven men from the group around Gustav Smetana were placed on a public trial in Moravské Budějovice. This was one of fifteen trials undertaken in the context of the Babice Case, in which 107 people were given lengthy prison sentences and 11 were sent to the gallows. Two of the death sentences were in Gustav Smetana’s group, Jan Nevoral was sentenced to twenty-three years of prison and the loss of all his property. His daughter Anděla had to give up her grammar school studies, and in the end, on 7 November 1952, she and her mother and brother were deported to Hynčice pod Sušinou, more than 260 kilometres away in the border region of north western Moravia, on the eastern slopes of the Králický Sněžník massif. Her father was released by a presidential amnesty in 1962. Until her retirement Anděla Černá worked at the Staré Město State Farm. She now lives in Šumperk.