Marie Říhová

* 1938

  • "That was a bad one because we couldn't be outside. We didn't know when the train would go or when it wouldn't. One day we were running around and the train suddenly started. Dad jumped out, grabbed us, and threw us back in the car... If we had missed that transport, it would have been hard to catch up. There was one little stove with soup cooking on it, and I remember it was terrible, my brother was eight months old, and the hygiene for those three weeks, that was quite a long time..."

  • "... they got to our part and burned out Český Malín, 13 July 1943. I remember that my father ran and shouted at us: 'Look, Český Malín is burning!' And we saw this black smoke. It was the people in those barns that were burned."

  • "Ukrainians did not want to join Russia. They wanted their own government, they opposed them. Bandera groups formed and tried to harm the Russians in every way they could."

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    Cheb, 10.06.2022

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Dad called: Look, Český Malín is on fire!

Marie Říhová
Marie Říhová
photo: Memory of Nations

Marie Říhová was born on 6 January 1938 in the village of Bryshchi in Volhynia. Her grandmother came to Ukraine from Mladá Boleslav to work. They were given land at that time, which gave them a living. Her father Bohuslav Kunc was conscripted into the Red Army during World War II and later fell into captivity. Eventually, as a soldier of the 1st Čs. Army Corps, he took part in the Carpathian-Dukla operation and the fighting in Slovakia. In 1943, the witness had seen the burning out of Český Malín. After the war, the family applied for repatriation - they waited two years for permission from the Russian government. In 1947, they came to Czechoslovakia and settled in Teplá in the Karlovy Vary region, where they acquired a small farm. In the 1950s, however, they lost it. They were prescribed such high contingents that they preferred to hand over the farm to the State Farm. The witness graduated from the pedagogical school and worked all her life as a first-grade teacher. In 2022 she lived in Teplá.