Ludmila Mikušková

* 1933

  • "In Prlov, when they were burning houses, people had to go out and search them. There was a little girl in a blanket and a German threw her out of the window. A neighbor saw it and she knew who the girl was, as she lived next door and knew the family. She thought about what to do with the little one, now when the parents were shot dead. And she knew she had grandparents in Polanka, so she let them know, or she took her there herself, I don't know. They just worked it out somehow, that she ended up with her grandparents, and that's where she grew up. And then she visited Prlov too, when she was grown up."

  • "As far as I know, my oldest sister supported our neighbors, who had a lot of children and their father was a partisan. They always had somebody there, somebody injured at home." - "What were their names, do you remember?" - "They were also Žák family, they were our family, second cousins. Partisans were treated there and one of them was there for a very long time, he was very ill. They helped him and he was cured. Then they were able to go home."

  • "It was the same, when we had to bring the application forms to the principal. I used to bring them to him too and everyone was going on about how the principal was refusing the people and didn't want them to leave the form there. So I prepared what I was going to tell him. I told myself I wouldn’t let anyone tell me what to do. He didn't say anything to me, he must have known I had a very glib tongue or something, because he only said something as I was leaving. As I was opening the door from the principal's office, he said, 'If you change your mind, come and get it,' so I could take it back. That was it. I was so ready to tell him what I had prepared beforehand, but I didn't say anything, as he didn't say anything and didn’t try to persuade me at all. I didn’t let him convince me. When one has to live in what they’ve grown up in and appreciates it..."

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    Valašská Polanka, 18.08.2020

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    duration: 01:38:47
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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We did not try to resist something we thought could not be changed

Ludmila Mikušková
Ludmila Mikušková
photo: Contemporary witness's archive

Ludmila Mikušková was born on May 22, 1933 as the youngest of six children in Valašská Polanka, where she lived her whole life. Her parents, František and Jana Žák, lived on a farm. Her father fought in the First World War and ended up wounded. Shortly before the end of the Second World War, Ludmila’s cousin František Žák took the side of the resistance supporters and he offered his house as a refuge to a Russian partisan, who hid there until he recovered from his injuries. Ludmilla’s sister Božena also supported František Žák’s family. Ludmila graduated from a primary school in Valašská Polanka and commuted to Vsetín for the lower-secondary school. From that time she remembers frequent air raids and also the crash of an American bomber (29 August 1944) close to the nearby village of Liptál. After finishing her schooling, Ludmila helped her parents on the farm and later joined the Vsetín Arms Factory as a worker. After the birth of her children she was employed at MEZ Vsetín. In 2021 she was still living in Valašská Polanka.