Emilie Nesvadbová

* 1935

  • "The men, as they were chasing the cows from the burned Český Malín and thus saved themselves, so they stopped by us in Ostrožská, which is a nearby Český Malín. I remember we were just fighting. They were all terrified of what had happened. It had to be an afternoon, because we went to have a look the same day. I remember it was ugly. Today I would do it again. My dad was running around his relatives and now the little shoes there and the legs ... A few minutes are stuck in my memory from the whole scene."

  • "Mrs. Pospíšilová then came to see where her grandmother was, because she remembered what she was wearing. This was the way others were identified too. They traced it with claws or sticks. So they recognized their folks. Some according to the ring, and another according to the pendant. I know that whoever came there within a week was looking for the relatives like that."

  • "The Germans came there, and Jerome could not stand on his feet. He was very sick and had a stick to hold on to. They drove everyone out, but he stayed in bed as he could not get up on his feet. One German came, uncovered him, and the grandfather told him he could not get out. That German helped him and told him to go into the grain, and that save my grandfather´s life. He sent him away from the others."

  • "I got meningitis, an ugly one, so that I almost dropped dead. I had a mad fever and it did not go down for a few days. As they used to drain the blood through the veins, they cut my back with my razor, laid me down on the table, and the men held me, while I got warm flasks that drained blood out. That was done three times. The doctor who lived with us saw that it was not helping at all, and she said it was the end. So they put me in an empty room, covered me with a sail and opened the windows. I probably experienced a clinical death. My dad could not sleep, and apparently an angel came to him and told me to give me some hot tea. So he made tea for me, but I could not open my mouth. He opened it with a knife and gave me a few drops of tea. Supposedly I coughed, and the doctor heard it in the next room and rushed in through the door. Then it all started to get better and she rescued me."

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    Šumperk, 29.11.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 02:10:54
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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I can still see little children´s shoes amid the burn

Emilie Nesvadbová - 2017
Emilie Nesvadbová - 2017
photo: Vít Lucuk

Emílie Nesvadbová, née Vignerová, was born on 20 November 1935 in the regional town of Ostrožec in Volyn in the former Poland (today´s Ukraine). At the age of less than eight years she personally witnessed the results of Nazi craze in the Český Malín. Amongst the burn and shot bodies of men, women and children there was also her sixty-eight years old granny Alžběta Vignerová, forty-three years old uncle Václav with his wife Maria (six years younger) and fourteen year old son Vladimir, thirty-two years old aunt Anežka Zemanová with her thirty-four years old husband Boris and their two daughters - ten year old Eliška and seven year old Mařenka. Only the grandpa, Jeroným Vigner, survived the massacre, to whom the family immediately moved from Ostrožec to Český Malín. Not long after that the witnessed lied in the empty room covered with a white sheet. She could not move due to high temperature caused by meningitis and everyone thought she could not be helped. Shortly after the father buried his mother and siblings, he was expecting the death of his eldest daughter. In the toughest times of his life apparently an angel appeared to him advising his daughter should get a few drops of tea. And those saved the life of Emília Nesvadbová. She started coughing and several weeks later she could stand up again. In 1947 the family re-emigrated to Czechoslovakia and settled down in Frankštát, where many families from the burnt Český Malín moved after the Germans were resettled. Out of pieta the village changed its name to Nový Malín in 1947. Since the age of fifteen until retirement Emílie Nesvadbová worked in Metro Šumperk. In 1955 she married Oldřich Nesvadba, and had two children, Ladislav and Irena with him. In 2017 she lived in Šumperk.