Soňa Antošová

* 1937

  • „What was the end of the war like in Litomyšl?” “Really nice. I experienced the first end of the war still in Litomyšl, then after the summer holiday or maybe during it we moved back to Zábřeh. Because we had only left Zábřeh for it had come under the Nazi-controlled Sudetenland. As soon as the war was over, we returned back. Right after the summer holiday my father bought a house and we started living there again. Then my grandma and grandpa moved back too, they had had their house there before the war. Although in my grandma’s house, if I can tell this terrifying story, some Germans had lived there in her house. Because it was Sudetenland. And when the war was over or was close to being over, the German family was probably scared that it would end up bad for them. So, they all committed suicide, their father – the head of the family – had probably assisted them. They set the house on fire and the father hung himself on a belt from an apple tree in the garden. When we came back there after the war and saw it all, a piece of that belt had still been hanging from a branch, from when they had cut him off, it had still been hanging there.”

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    Praha, 17.09.2019

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Normalization was a nasty and boring period

Soňa Antošová during the shooting
Soňa Antošová during the shooting
photo: natáčení Paměti národa

Soňa Antošová, née Macková, was born in Zábřeh na Moravě on July 3, 1937. Her father Alois Macek was a stone sculptor and her mother’s father founded the local labor movement in Zábřeh. The city had been caught in Nazi land take after the Munich agreement and the family moved away. Soňa spent her war years with her grandparents in Litomyšl, later the whole family returned back to Zábřeh. There she graduated from a gymnasium and continued with studying Russian language at the University of Russian language and literature in Prague. After graduation she found a job in the State Scientific Library in Ostrava where she met her future husband Antonín Antoš. The couple married in 1960, moved to Kolín in order to have an apartment and had one daughter. After Soňa’s maternity leave she started working in a library in Kolín where she stayed until 1991.In 1989 she founded the Civic Forum in the library. Between 1992 and 1998 she worked as a regional manager of the Civic Democratic Party. She has been a member of this party ever since. She lives in the village Pašinka, where she still works in the local library and writes the village chronicle.