Věra Šmejkalová

* 1927

  • “She has really helped many people. I still remember it as if it were today, because during the war, little children used to wear a beaked cap, tied under the chin - I never had it, but it was worn a lot. She had such a brown cap, glasses this thick, she was short, wore a thick brown coat, well, she was ugly. But she was very kind. My sister had told her where she was to go, and she found the address of that Helada factory, and she came to see us there late in the evening and she brought the message from my sister written on a brown toilet paper: ´Mom, if I don’t return, give him the same upbringing as you had given to us.´ Well, she didn’t come back anymore.”

  • “On Christmas, I already had my daughter Ivana, she got a baby pram and he got a bicycle. We were sitting around the table, around the Christmas tree. The girl was younger than him, we were playing with her and with the pram, and suddenly he started for the hallway and began saying: ´I don’t want any presents, I want my Mom.´ That was terrible.”

  • “She told us to wait somewhere behind those trees, saying that she would go with the children and show us the boy about whom she thought that it could be him. I still remember it as if it were today. They were coming from the left side, I was standing with my Mom behind a bush and they passed by. What clothes they wore! Coats from army blankets, green coats made from army blankets, trousers from some bedticking cloth and red berets on their heads. I could see them very well as they were walking by. He was the last one walking with them to that lawn, or he was not walking actually, but crawling on all fours, he could not lift his leg. I said: ´Mom, the last one is ours.´”

  • “Then you walked upstairs where they had their bedroom. When you walked up you couldn’t see it, but when you descended the stairs, there was an inscription in gold and black on that staircase, saying: ´We will die anyway.´ I don’t remember it exactly, but the letters were this size. And the lives of Lyčka and this teacher then really ended there, they died there.”

  • “My Mom was being interrogated in the Petschek Palace almost every day. They were actually interrogating us all the time, trying to find out if we knew something or not. She even had to bring me with her one day, me, a fifteen-year-old girl. I was studying grammar school at that time. They asked me why I was going to school and not supporting the victory of the Greater German Reich. (laughing) I, a fifteen-year-old girl, was telling them that I was going to school.”

  • Full recordings
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    Praha, Opatov, 18.05.2010

    (audio)
    duration: 01:05:28
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Byt pamětnice Opatov, 26.04.2012

    (audio)
    duration: 01:02:38
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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If one person were to get to heaven, it should be my sister

Věra a Jiří Šmejkalovi.JPG (historic)
Věra Šmejkalová
photo: pořízena při natáčení

  Věra Šmejkalová, née Sekáčová, was born June 27, 1927. She had two older sisters - Jarmila and Josefa, and a brother. Their father died at the age of 45, Věra was five years old at that time. Since then they had been brought up by their mother Anna Sekáčová. Josefa married Ludvík Vaněk, who was a member of the Sokol movement. During the war the husband and wife became active members of the Sokol resistance organization called Jindra. During the terror following Heydrich’s assassination (May 27, 1942) in July 1942 the Vaněks were hiding MUDr. Břetislav Lyčka in their house in Ouběnice near Tomice. Lyčka had provided medical assistance to the injured paratroopers Kubiš and Gabčík in the crypt of the Orthodox church of Saints Cyril and Methodius on Resslova Street. He was hiding in the basement of the Vaněks’ house for two weeks. On July 21, 1942 another member of the resistance movement, teacher F. Kotrba, was supposed to bring him false documents and take him to another hiding place. He was however arrested by the Gestapo at the railway station in Tomice and forced to lead them the Vaněks’ house. He entered the house to fetch Lyčka, and both committed suicide by shooting themselves in the basement. Josefa Vaňková was arrested immediately after she came home; she was in the fifth month of pregnancy. The Gestapo then went directly to the factory near Bystřice u Benešova to arrest her husband who was working there as a foreman. The Vaněks were deported to Terezín. Ludvík Vaněk was subsequently transported to Mauthausen, where he was executed on October 24, 1942. Pregnant Josefa was taken to the prison in Prague-Pankrác, where she gave birth to her son Ludvík on November 2, 1942. A German wardress passed this information on to the Sekáč family. On January 26, 1943, Josefa was sent to the gas chambers in Mauthausen. The family was intensely searching for their child throughout the war. They eventually found Ludvík in March 1945 in a German military hospital by the Thomayer hospital in Prague. The Sekáč family was allowed to take Ludvík on May 11, 1945. A birth certificate had to be issued for the boy, because he had not been registered anywhere. He only had an iron plate with him, bearing his number: GT 57. Ludvík was brought up by his grandmother, and his aunt Věra Šmejkalová was also helping in taking care of him. His parents were decorated with awards in memoriam.