Tamara Kobosilová

* 1931

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  • "My father hadn't seen us for a very long time, as my brother and I grew up, so my mother was always wondering because no photos were allowed to be sent. But there were some packages, only we couldn't afford the packages, but dad had a friend when he was young who owned a restaurant here in Mala Skála [....]. That was Mr. Vlček. That restaurant must have taken in the Hitler Youth, that was Hitler's youth who came here for convalescence. He used to get huge rations of food for them, so he would always steal it and make a parcel for my father, and that parcel was sent to Buchenwald. And one time, when there was a package of lard, my mother somehow put our photograph in the lard from the bottom. But the Germans weren't so stupid, they studied everything and when they found my photo they said I was a Germanic type. And they even gave the photo to my father, who was surprised [....]. So that's how he got our photo. I used to sit here with him for whole evenings, when he was telling us about the concentration camp in particular."

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    Turnov, 09.03.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:42:45
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Solid moral principles are like a life compass

Tamara Kobosilová
Tamara Kobosilová
photo: Archive of the witness

Tamara Kobosilová, née Svobodová, was born on March 8, 1931 in Turnov. Until she was eight years old, she grew up with her parents and her five years older brother. On September 1, 1939, her father was arrested by the Gestapo and, together with another man from Turnov, interned in the Buchenwald concentration camp until the end of the war. This fact significantly affected the family’s life, even materially. Thanks to regular financial help from Sokol, the family survived. The witness bore her father’s absence very hard. February 1948 brought another hard blow to the family life. The persecution of the father, who was an active member of the Czechoslovak National Socialist Party even after his return from the concentration camp, by the Communist authorities began. First he was briefly imprisoned in the Turnov prison, then he was expelled from Turnov to Litoměřice, then to Žalhostice, where he worked as a teacher; he came home only on weekends. His last place of work was Liberec, but even there he did not escape the surveillance of the State Security (StB). The witness graduated from primary school and grammar school in Turnov. She studied Czech-Russian at the Faculty of Education of Charles University in Prague, which she supplemented with a degree in special pedagogy; she then devoted herself to this profession for some time. For the longest time, however, she worked as an editor at the State Pedagogical Publishing House in Prague. She had two daughters from her first marriage. She met her second husband, a French citizen, through correspondence. The friendship grew into marriage. She often stayed in France, but for family reasons she never moved there permanently. In 2024 she lived in Turnov.