Borisa Kučerová

* 1933

  • On the [horse drawn carriage] shafts, there were five ropes tied and each one of them [the Germans] had the rope like this and was holding it. On that wagon the former commissioner was sitting, the mayor of the town [Fritz Mikiska], and he was a German. But he was the mayor even during the First Republic. He was a very nice man, he owned a factory, they made shovels and spades and things like that. Of course, during the war, maybe some munitions were made there, I don't know. This man, who had saved some people in Litovel, the mob put him on a postal wagon, he was kneeling there and holding on to the railing. Above him were two Czechs from Litovel, but belonging to the mob that was there. There weren't many of them, but they were there. And they were dressed in some uniforms, probably of Czechoslovak policemen, and they had a whip and with it they were beating the people who were pulling the wagon. And they always said, 'Halt and stop!' So they stopped and the mayor was forced to say - I remember it literally: 'I am a traitor to the Czech nation and Hitler is a swine.' And he had to repeat in German. And they always drove some fifteen or twenty meters. The ones who were pulling the wagon were so exhausted, their faces were completely red. You could see they were pulling with the last of their strength. So that´s what I saw with my own eyes."

  • "The bridges were blown up. However, the Russians quickly made pontoon bridges and moved on. We went to the river and there was a terrible sight. In Litovel, by the Morava River, there was a gamekeeper´s cottage in a little wood and the gamekeeper was German. And this man was wedged into a cart. These were little carts that used to carry grass. His head was twisted backwards like this, and he had wet clothes, because they apparently had thrown him into the water and then pulled him out of the water. That's what I learned as people were telling the story there. He was lying there and he was grunting and people were coming and spitting on him. After that we stayed at home and played somewhere and we didn't go anywhere. I can still see it in front of me. I was thinking, 'How is it possible that people can sink like that?'"

  • "We used to go to the May Mass and it was evening and the door opened and an officer came in. And he asked my mother if she would be so kind as to heat water, that they needed to wash something and if they could use the well in the yard. So our mother said yes, because [he was] an SS man... But they were very polite, and they were probably the people who burned down Javoříčko, because it was before Javoříčko."

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    Šumperk, 16.05.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 02:24:17
    media recorded in project Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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After the war, jazz appeared and suddenly it was over and „ left foot ahead“

Borisa Kučerová in 2022
Borisa Kučerová in 2022
photo: Post Bellum

Borisa Kučerová, née Trávníčková, was born on 10 May 1933 in Litovel. During World War II, she experienced a Gestapo search of her home on suspicion of aiding Jews, and she watched the transports of Jews to Auschwitz passing through nearby Červenka. Her uncle, Karel Prášil, was executed by the Nazis for partisan activities, and one of her best friends, Alice Festová, was murdered at the age of nine in the Malý Trostinec extermination camp. At the end of the war, Wehrmacht soldiers repeatedly slept in their house. In May 1945, she witnessed the lynching of Germans in Litovel. After finishing her studies she worked as a nurse and laboratory technician in hospitals in Šumperk, [Klášterní] Hradisko in Olomouc, in Zábřeh (Ostrava) and Poruba. With her husband Metoděj Kučera they have three children. She has repeatedly experienced injustice at work because of her anti-regime attitudes. In 1983 she helped her youngest son Dušan to escape to the West just before his graduation from secondary school. Because of this, she went through countless interrogations by the State Security. After retiring in 1987, she moved to a cottage in the village of Bukovice in the foothills of Hrubý Jeseník, where she and her second husband Milan Němec were living at the time of recording, in 2022.