“They counted on the fact the front went over Vidnava, and so that the civilians were not affected much, they were evacuated as much as possible. No one wanted to leave, so a German aircraft flew over and threw four bombs in the surroundings of Vidnava. And people were up on their legs immediately escaping. We left for Vápenná, as next to us there was the villa of Latzel and due to the fact we lived in a small house belonging to the villa my dad was a kind of a housekeeper. He was bringing coal and taking rubbish out and stuff like that. Therefore we lived at the Latzels´in Vápenná. I do not recall how long for, but when we came back home, the Russians were already there.“
“I remember my father gave me Czech history lessons. I knew Czech, but in 1944, a year prior to starting school I had to go to the kindergarten. So in 1944 and 1945 I was attending a kindergarten. Amongst German children I learnt properly German and forgot Czech. So when I came to school in 1945 I could not speak any Czech. Back then it was not like today, that each child had an assistant. There was nothing like that. Here there were Slovaks, Hungarians, Rumanian, and finally Greeks. There were nine or more nationalities here. And children were simply thrown in the water to learn how to swim on their own.“
František Palička was born on 23rd April, 1939 in Vidnava (German Weidenau) as the only child of the parents František and Ida Palička. While his father had Czech anscients, his mother was of German origin. His father was one of only few Czechs, who remained in Vidnava, which following the Munich agreement was already a part of the Sudeten Germany. He ran a saddlery trade and although he became a member of the communist party already in the 1920s he suffered no trouble. One of the first memories of František Palička regards an evacuation of civil residents of Vidnava before the coming front. Noone wanted to leave the town, so the German airplane threw several bombs in the neighbourhood to scare them away. After the war the witness experienced removal of local residents to Germany and an arrival of new inhabitants not only from Bohemia, but also other European states. From the post-war times he also remembers how they as small boys used to play in the empty buildings and also the death of his friend, Miroslav Kalabis, in whose hand a grenade exploded in the classroom. More of his memories are from the period of the communist dictatorship. He explains how he experienced abolition of local scouting organisation and also about his father being forced to cease his saddlery workshop. He also remembers order nuns interned in Vidnava. The town suffered a major blow by the removal of original inhabitants and it has been recovering until today.
