Věra Pohlová

* 1924  †︎ 2019

  • „When Prague was bombed, that was in February 1945, I was there and saw it at midday, as suddenly there were the fish floating in the beautiful skies, and I was walking along the Russian street to our boarding house right at midday. It was interesting that other times they would be blowing the sirens a lot and this time there was none. But suddenly I saw, when we turned round, there were not so many houses yet, I saw some blocks of flats in Vinohrady - Flora. And above them there were the lovely little fish, and the sky was totally blue, and all of a sudden those tiny little things began.. to fall down and it was all over. But meanwhile there was a lot of smoke from below, it was light to start with, then brown and finally there were flames too. Because all the houses that were there, had people in covers in them, just in cellars, and there was gas everywhere. And as soon as it blasted and got down there, people not only got trapped, but also burnt to death as they could not get out. It was terrible. We went immediately to our house, just a few steps and we knew we´ll be needed. Because they began to bring people, where it was necessary and miss teacher went with small kids, they´d hide them in a cellar. But really it was not urgent, no one got a straight hit, but due to the pressure wave the glass windows were crushed and children suffered many splinters. And we knew, as we had praxis, so those who were wounded and taken to Vinohrady hospital so we knew they cannot go to the doctors to operations room. They had to take their clothes off, get washed, because they were covered by earth, as we did all that. And in eye surgery they had those little children, it took all day, there was much to do, because those, who died, didn’t take much, but those, who didn’t, and had some… One of my colleagues went along the Vinohrady street and there was a company making good food like sausages, and one of the houses got hit straight... today you can see it, where there are new houses next to the old ones. You walk all across Vršovice, cause it was going down even before Smíchov station, and passed it and crushed down the statues in Palackého square and Emauzy, and most dead people were in Karlovo square, in the part near Emauzy, there was so called bunker. But it was not a real one, it was just dug up in the ground and there were many bombs that fell right down. So there was most dead people, as the cover was not proper one and those people were gathering there, when they saw the bombs going down.“

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 11.11.2015

    (audio)
    duration: 03:17:27
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Life taught me not to fear anything

Graduation photograph
Graduation photograph
photo: Archív pamětnice

Věra Pohlová, née Nedělková, was born on 2nd October, 1924 in Prague. Her father, JUDr. Václav Nedělka, was a president of the Regional Court of Justice in Jihlava. There the family experience the occupation. In 1943 the witness graduated. She managed to avoid forced labour and began to study the only after-graduation studies that the Germans didn’t cancel. It was a school for social and health care set up by Alice Masaryková. Liberation by the Red Army happened, when she was in Kuřim, where she helped in a local hospital. After war Věra Pohlová finished her studies and started as a social worker in Moravské Budějovice. Her friend, Hynek, left to study theology to Prague and later became a priest of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church in the South Bohemia. There they also married in 1947. Later her husband Hynek took over the parish in Prague - Vinohrady, where he devoted himself to administering social facilities under the church committee. Eventually he managed to get the witness to Prague too. Hynek Pohl died in 1986. Věra Pohlová died in 2019.