“They came at half past one. ‘Get dressed. You come with us.’ By then the parents probably knew what was going on. Mum got dressed and went. They asked where the father was. At school. We saw them driving for him. When they left, sister and I ran to the school. We came just when they were taking dad outside. We just had a look at him getting into the car and leaving. […] A car came from Tábor at half past nine at night and brought death certificates – the parents had been executed. They told my sister immediately because she was there somewhere [ed. note: at the municipal authority] but I was only told in the morning.”
“We went to our place. They only allowed me to take my school bat and coat. The same with my sister, I can’t recall. We had to leave and they took the keys to the flat. And that was it. Then I went to sleep at my teacher’s, the one I told you about. My sister went to our relatives.”
“They arrested my parents in 1941 and took them to the Gestapo in České Budějovice. They kept them there for about three days and questioned them about the distribution of V boj, an illegal magazine, but they never proved them anything. You see, we got milk from this farm; the farmers’ son worked in Prague and was involved with V boj. He was arrested and my parents were released.”
Svatava Sojková, née Kodádková, was born in Vodňany on 19 May 1928. Her father Josef Kodádek was a teacher and the headmaster of the boys’ school in Vodňany and was also involved in the municipal politics. Her mother Antonie was a housewife. The Gestapo in Tábor arrested the Kodádeks on 29 June 1942 and executed them the same day on the grounds of their alleged approval of the assassination of the Reichsprotektor Reinhard Heydrich. Svatava was left alone with her elder sister. She lived with her relatives. She studied at the Teachers’ Institute in Prague between 1944 and 1946 and became a preschool teacher. She worked at preschools in Prague and retired in 1984. Svatava Sojková died on March 31, 2021.
