Ilsa Půtová

* 1942

  • "When I was pregnant: 'Thank God,' I thought to myself, 'I'm going to have a baby' - and in the year 1968, the Russians came here. I thought mom went crazy. She said: 'There's an occupation here.' And I replied: 'Jesus, maybe she's already losing it...' Then we kind of heard it. That they are occupying us here. Now we went to Klášterec. The town was fortified by those tanks. Jesus, there were so many soldiers. We just went there and I said: 'Girls, if they kill me, I won't even know I have a baby.'"

  • „When that Mrázek used to come here and kill, once it happened to us, early in the morning we were walking past the cellar, there was some kind of dancing and such, and perhaps there should also be a corridor further on, where all kinds of things were put on. That's how we rode with my friend and my sister on a bicycle, and as we were passing by, and we were scared, it's true, there was a guy standing below - I saw the Mrázek then, I was reading a book - he had a man's bicycle leaning there, a flat cap and he looked at us, and we looked back at him for a long time, but he kept following us with his eyes and surely it was him, because that look and all... I was terrified of that. So we drove, then we got on the bike, it's a miracle we didn't kill ourselves because we all fell off. As we hit a rock at a high speed and flew off... But it was all cool. So that's how the incident was…”

  • „When I left school because my dad died, I then went to work in plant production on the farm, that's the fact that we had a lot of hard work there. If some of the girls did that, you wouldn't even... well... We climbed trees, we cut branches in the winter - and climbing a tree where there is snow, that was no fun. Now we were afraid of those wild boars… but that's a fact.“

  • Full recordings
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    V Chomutově, 23.01.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 49:50
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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My dad died when I was 14, so I had to go to work

Ilsa Půtová - historical photo
Ilsa Půtová - historical photo
photo: archiv pamětníka

Ilsa Půtová, née Mehrsteiner, was born on March 13, 1942 in Ahníkov (Hagensdorf) in a German family as one of four children (she has a brother and two sisters). The grandparents lost their house after the war and the family had to move to a municipal apartment. But they were not deported to Germany; the father Vilhelm was said to be recognized as an anti-fascist. Ilsa started attending elementary school in Zásad. For the second stage, she went to Kralupy, two kilometers away. However, she had to stop attending school at the age of 14 after the death of her father. She worked on a farm in Ahníkov in crop production and in Ušák in animal production, later grinding and assembling bearings in ZKL Klášterec nad Ohří and after maternity leave she started as a cleaner in a kindergarten. She and her family had to move to Chomutov due to the progressive mining of brown coal. She has two daughters and three granddaughters. She likes traveling and going to the seaside.