Pěvuše Kohoutová

* 1920

  • “In the year 1949 Archbishop Beran sent a partoral letter to all the parishes, then came a telegram not to let it get public. But then my husband secretly brought it to the rectory. After some time they came to my husband at the post office and asked him to take an action he didn't want to take because he said he had sworn a postal secret. Though he knew he would bear the consequences, but he could not do it. He said, 'I know it's not going to be right with me then.' And they said, 'No.' Well, a few months passed, and my husband was dismissed from the manager´s job and had to do the substitutes around the post offices in the neighbourhood for some time. After some time, he was dismissed from the post office and got unemployed. So we were looking for a new job for him.“

  • “Then there were the 77 officials who were supposed to work in blue-collar professions. And so the husband was appointed to go to the mines, but because he had glasses, they put him in the Skoda to the crafting table. He was commuting for some time, but it was too far, so he found an apartment there in Pilsen. But there was no heating, so he ran around Pilsen to warm himself up. He had been there for two years and his legs had swollen, so the doctor wrote that he couldn't do it anymore. A new director came to take him back to the post office. ”[Witnesses mentions a so-called Action 77. This was announced in 1951 in connection with an increase in economic tasks, when the industry demanded tens of thousands of new workforce. In the framework of the action 77 000 - not 77 - officials were to be transferred to the production process.]

  • "That was a grand event, when General Patton arrived with Marlene Dietrich, that was wonderful. But it also happened that in Přeštice in the school garden they had a table, which had to be attended by all Czechs who had to cooperate with the Germans or even the Germans. They had to bring with them all their property, the most necessary, only a few. At that table there were two women who had come from the concentration camp, and as they stood in the row, they had to go to the table one by one, lay the bundle of valuables there, the two women went, each boxing the person. There was a mother with her daughter, the daughter saw her mother being beaten, so she screamed, 'Mom!' We couldn't look at it anymore, so we went away. That was a single experience. Then the Czechs took revenge on innocent Germans, who were not responsible for anything. The people who worshiped the Germans and then beat them. Not all Germans were the same.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Klenčí pod Čerchovem, 06.06.2018

    (audio)
    duration: 41:18
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - PLZ REG ED
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Much bad was good for something

Pěvuše Kohoutová
Pěvuše Kohoutová
photo: Archiv pamětnice

Pěvuše Kohoutová was born in 1920 in the town of Vysoké Veselí in the Eastern Bohemia, where her father served as a gendarme. Because of her father’s profession, the family often moved, first to Upper Old Town near Trutnov and later to Kravaře near Česká Lípa, where they also experienced a change in the coexistence of Czechs and Germans after the seizure of the Sudetenland. Before the war, the family moved to Přeštice, where her father was commander of the police station. The witness married in Přeštice, remembers the course of the war, the liberation of the city by General Patton, who came here with Marlene Dietrich, but also the events associated with the wildly expulsion of the Germans. Between 1945-1948 she spent a happy period in Klenčí pod Čerchovem, where her husband became a postmaster. Pěvuše Kohoutová explains the hierarchy of postal officials, which changed after the February coup. In 1949, her husband delivered a pastoral letter to the rectory of the then Archbishop and later Cardinal Josef Beran despite the ban and refused to disclose postal secrets. He lost his job and was transferred to the production process under the so-called Action 77; he was first employed in Škoda in Pilsen, where he survived in an unheated apartment. Finally he returned to the post office in Klenčí, where he worked together with the witness until retirement.