Věra Zachařová, roz. Salačová

* 1942

  • “His (father – editor´s note) was released in the first wave of arresting of Sokol members and then they imprisoned him again for denouncement. My parents learnt after war, who denounced them; it was the other butcher in Kostelec. He found out that my father was slaughtering cattle at night as everything was to get with ratios and he supported the Sokol member families. He did that at night. The other butcher saw the light under the door and denounced him. So that is how they took my father. When the gestapo took him he got sentenced to death penalty. He was sent to work in ruin and as a loading car went past, he caught it from below and let it drive him out of the prison.”

  • “He had a concrete kind of… cell there. There were tires thrown on top of it. He was hiding inside all day long and went out only at night to stretch out. Gestapo men with dogs obviously searched him but lost his track at the river. It an enormous courage on their part (the Chalupa family – editor´s note) unbelievable courage. They had two boys of their own and they´d execute the whole family. Of course they knew he got a death penalty.”

  • “As far as I remember what my daddy said I was taken to re-education to Germany, as I fulfilled the Arian norms. Such children were sent to German families without any own children. I was already in the transport, but thanks to my parents´ friends I disappeared from there. So that they didn’t find me, I was sent far away to my granny in Činěves, where no one looked for me.”

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    Praha, 09.02.2017

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For two and half years he was hiding in the courtyard of a concrete cell

Věra Salačová -  Zachařová 18 old
Věra Salačová - Zachařová 18 old
photo: archiv pamětnice

Věra Zachařová, née Salačová, was born on 8th December, 1942 in Prague to Josef and Emily. The family lived in Kostelec nad Labem, where his father operated the butchers. He was an active member of the Sokol sports association and a representative in gymnastics. In December 1942 he and his wife were arrested based on a denunciation by the Gestapo for doing a secret slaughter. Illegal meat was meant for the resistance fighters and their families. Emily, who gave birth only five days ago, was released by the gestapo, but was sent to a labour camp in half a year. Only six months old Věra was chosen for adoption for her Arian looks in a German family, which didn’t happen due to family friends’ intervention and went to her granny to Činěves. Josef Salač, who was sentenced to death penalty, managed to escape using a loading truck that took him out of the prison workplace. For two and a half years he was hiding in Jiřice near the Chalupa family in a tight cell in the courtyard. After war the whole family reunited again. Following February 1948 the communists confiscated the firm from the Salač family; still Josef Salač joined the communist party out of idealism. Epiphany came only when he saw how the communists treated his machines. Věra Zachařová could not study at the secondary school, and finally she was accepted to the industrial school of meat technology, which became a shelter for the former entrepreneur’s children. Following further distance study she worked as a health laboratory. All her life she devoted to Sokol and modern gymnastics, which she did even professionally in her youth.