Blažena Baborová

* 1935

  • “We left at about ten o’clock. We didn’t know anything, we just went. It was a big group, including about six children. Even one little girl who’s parents had told her they were going fishing. She later said she would never go fishing again. We went towards [the border] from Františkovy Lázně. Someone must have told on Dad, because they were already there waiting for us. It wasn’t completely on the border, that was another two or so kilometres away. The informant must have know the route that Dad would take, because they were already waiting for us there. When we were supposed to cross the road, the border guards appeared, lights blazed up: ‘Stop!’ Then they came to us, I don’t know what they were discussing. You could say that they murdered Dad, because we weren’t trying to run. We all stood still, there was the road on one side and a meadow on the other, there was nowhere to run.”

  • “We were approached by two border guards. I reckon that Dad must have recognised one of them. He used to guide people when [that person] was on duty, he must have arranged with him when the person would be on duty, when Father could guide the people over without harm. They were sure to have this time arranged as well, that we would cross over no problem. When the border guard came up, Father recognised him. According to the interrogation notes (which I don’t have any more, I gave them to my brother), Dad turned to him and said: ‘You...!’ - a nasty word, I won’t repeat it. And he made as if to leap at him, but he didn’t do anything to him, because the report states that Dad had a pistol, but that it had not been used. I don’t know why the border guard shot him. Dad copped it right into the heart, and another bullet into the ankle; he was dead on the spot. I think that the border guard probably shot him because Dad would have been a witness to the fact that he had helped him guide people over. They would have locked him up too. With Dad dead he was in the free, everything was blamed on Anděl.”

  • “Some [of the expelled Germans] were deported West and some East. I know that’s how it was. When we were in Biedermeier later on, there was a German lady with us, she helped Mum and so on. I heard that she was supposed to have been deported to the eastern part [of Germany]. Of course, who wanted to go East? No one. They said that Dad had guided her to the West. Simply one day she didn’t come. I know they said something about Dad having taken her across to the West Zone.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Cheb, 05.12.2013

    (audio)
    duration: 02:21:05
    media recorded in project Iron Curtain Stories
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Being a western resistance fighter, Dad just couldn’t stomach the Communists winning here

Blažena Baborová
Blažena Baborová
photo: Eva Palivodová

Blažena Baborová, née Andělová, was born on 7 February 1935 near Nitra in West Slovakia. In March 1939 her father Jan Anděl left via Poland to France, where he joined the Foreign Legion. After the outbreak of World War II he was transferred to the Czechoslovak military forces. In June 1940 he took part in the Battle of France. After France capitulated he and other members of the Czechoslovak Foreign Army retreated to Britain. In 1944 he fought at Dunkirk. After the war he became the National Administrator of a hotel in the spa town Františkovy Lázně, and after the Communist coup in February 1948 he guided people over the borders into Germany. On 11 April 1948 he was guiding his family and other people. The group was detained by members of the National Defence Corps (the police) and in the ensuing encounter Jan Anděl was shot and killed. The witness’s pregnant mother Pavla Andělová was held in custody for two months, she gave birth to her second daughter after being released. The family continued to live in Františkovy Lázně. Blažena learnt to be a clockmaker in Nové Město nad Metují, and she applied this craft in Aš. She then worked as a shop assistant at a jeweller’s in Cheb; after returning from mother’s leave she was employed at the spa in Františkovy Lázně. She graduated from an evening school of economics and worked as an accountant in a coal depot and at the Balneo spa centre. She retired in 1990.