Eva Stodolová

* 1933

  • “During the war, father got to prison again for the second time, because he continued with his resistance activity, of course. And somehow it got discovered, because they were transmitting messages, they were sending radio messages to London. That means that they were transmitting from here, and people from London were sending messages to us. And they were the people who operated the transmitter, they were the paratroopers who got here to us, or perhaps even soldiers who had been originally in the Czechoslovak army, and they established connection with London. Well, but the transmitters had to be moved constantly, because Germans were able to localize them. They had a kind of a car, perhaps you saw it in some film, and the car had a ring-shaped device on the roof, how to describe it, something like a circle, which looked like a TV antenna, or something like that. And they were riding the car around and intercepting the signals and locating the places from where they were being transmitted. One transmitting session therefore could not last too long, and secondly, they had to change the locations. They were therefore transmitting from several places in Modřany, like from the Skála family in Třetí Baby, or I think from Sejkora family’s place in Komořany, and from our home, too. We had some transmitter hidden inside the wall there. I actually don’t even know how everything was, but simply it happened that this group was discovered, and then there were arrests.”

  • “Another thing I remember is the terror which followed after Heydrich’s assassination in 1942. He was assassinated and policemen were then going from house to house and they were carrying photos of the assassins, the paratroopers who had eliminated Heydrich. They were showing to people the photos of the briefcase and the raincoat or whatever it was. Those were things that had been found there, and a bicycle, too, I think. Well, and I was overjoyed to see it, and I was enthusiastically jumping with joy that they came to us, too, to show us the pictures. It was actually so horrible, everybody was scared and if by any chance something had been found - there was a martial law in effect at that time - and that person would have been sentenced to death without too much hassle and they would have been shot immediately. And I actually thought that it was funny, because they were carrying those pictures of things and showing them around.”

  • “Well, during the war, my mom was headed for a suicide, for safety reasons. When they imprisoned my father, when he was arrested by the Gestapo, that was at the time of his second arrest, she said that they would come for her and that she would not be able to endure the torture and she would probably confess something. She was afraid that she would give away some information. For this reason, she had some poison at home, I don’t know what it was, but probably something which worked quickly, but of course we didn’t know what it was.”

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    v bytě Evy Stodolové (Dolní Břežany), 15.11.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 01:28:17
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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I considered my father to be unbeatable

Eva Stodolová
Eva Stodolová
photo: Pamět Národa - Archiv

Eva Stodolová was born on August 1, 1933 in Prague into the family of builder František Kolman. She lived with her parents and four siblings. She started her school attendance on September 1, 1939, the same day when World War Two broke out. She remembers the rationing system for food, blackouts, school vacation due to lack of coal for heating, classes held in pubs, the terror following Heydrich’s assassination as well as the Prague Uprising. Her father was very active in the resistance movement - he was posting pamphlets in streets, hiding a transmitter in their home and communicating with London and the paratroopers. He was imprisoned two times during the war for his resistance activity. After the communist coup d’état in 1948 he continued with the resistance and he spent fifteen years in prison for alleged preparation of a military uprising against the communist regime.