“Back then train engines had what was called a ‘hytlák’ behind them, where the suitcases and luggage or goods and things were transported, so you could hide among them. Or I know that when the train went through Dominikální Paseky, which is after Bratkovice, and the houses there, if you notice, have their gardens right up to the railway track. So they’d dump leaflets or supplies for the partisans off the train there.”
“One time I had an article in the newspapers – only Rudé právo [Red Law - trans.] was published back then – and I had a full-page article about social issues in the supplement of Rudé právo. But that caused trouble; I had never been in the Party. Chance had it that the issue of Rudé právo came out the same day there was the district conference of the CPC [Communist Party of Czechoslovakia - trans.] in Příbram, and one of the big wigs there reckoned he couldn’t let some Fousová, who wasn’t even in the Party, brag about in the newspaper. It got me into a pretty mess.”
“We had an illegal pig, Dad taught himself how to slaughter it and process it because it was dangerous to invite anyone to do it for us. We rendered pots of lard and hid it all over the place. One time the Germans came and searched the house. I guess they were looking for some leaflets or a partisan. And the way Germans are... They had orders to search for a man or some leaflets. So they skewered pots of lard with their bayonets, but they didn’t care about that. They found nothing, so let lard be lard. And they didn’t ask where we got the lard from seeing that you couldn’t buy any on the market.”
Ludmila Fousová, née Sirotková, was born on 16 November 1929 in Příbram - Březové Hory. Her mother was from Březové Hory, her father came from Jablonné near Dolní Hbity. She had a younger sister and brother. To begin with they lived with their parents in a miner’s house in Březové Hory, later they moved into a vila at the foot of Holy Mountain near Příbram. She attended a girls’ elementary school in Dlouhá Street, Příbram, after which she enrolled as a junior at a classical grammar school in Příbram. In June 1942 she witnessed how the Gestapo came to the grammar school to arrest the headmaster Josef Lukeš. The family helped the local partisans, and their house was searched by the Gestapo several times. Her uncle was arrested for listening to foreign radio broadcasts; he died in prison in Dresden during one of the last big air raids. In February 1948 the witness took part in the students’ march to Prague Castle in opposition to the Communists. After graduating from grammar school in 1948 she completed a librarian course and worked at the library in Příbram. Later, she completed a social and legal school in Prague; she worked in the social sphere for the rest of her life. When she retired, she was director of the District Institute of Social Services. She has two children, and she lives in Příbram. Ludmila Fousová died on 7 February 2020.
