“We didn’t know why Dad used to go there. And then came a period that I don’t like remembering. But I keep thinking about it. It was 30 June 1942. Dad was forty years old, and he went to Beroun to pass an examination in front of some committee, so he could teach at people’s economic schools. He was qualified to teach at upper primary schools, but he wanted to have this in addition. It was Tuesday noon and Dad was putting on his tie. He was looking at the newspaper, and there was a list of people executed for hostility to the Reich. One of the names there was Vladislav Vančura [a famous Czech writer - trans.]. And Dad said to Mum: ‘That’s awful, they’re murdering the best of us, Vančura, such a writer, such a man, and he’s gone.’ Little did he know that he himself would be gone three days later.”
“They told Mum there that he wasn’t in Kladno any more, that he was in Petschek Palace in Prague. So Mum went there. When she got there, they showed her his things. They told her that he was arrested and that they cannot say anything more. Some thirty days went by and we received an official statement that Dad had been shot on 3 July as an enemy of the Reich. Note, he was arrested on Tuesday 30 June and killed on 3 July. He was shot on the Kobylisy shooting range. How Dad must have suffered, not knowing what would happen to us...”
“As a twelve-year-old I was registered for deportation to the Reich, where I was to be Germanified. The res of the house, which was Mum’s, was to be confiscated by the Reich. She was to be deported to Karlštejn. We only discovered that after the war. Mum heard about it all from the commissar at the town hall, who made use of the fact that no one else was about and told her everything that was in store for us, though not with immediate effect. But he said that it was part of the programme of the Nazis there. How Mum must have suffered... And Grandpa was old. It was just the three of us without money, because Grandma had been ill for a long time before that. She had lain in hospital for half a year, so all our savings were gone. She didn’t have any insurance. It was terrible.”
Soja Svobodová was born on 27 June 1930 in Prague. She spent much of her childhood in Počaply, where her grandmother kept a general store. She lived with her parents in Dvůr Králové; her father Jan Říha worked as a teacher. Her family had no idea that he was active in the anti-Nazi resistance during World War II. On 30 June 1942 he was arrested, and just a few days later, on 3 July, he was shot in Prague-Kobylisy. His wife and daughter Soja were left practically without means of sustenance. Her mother also found out that twelve-year-old Soja was to be taken to Germany for re-education. However, this threat was not realised, and the family survived the war. The witness became a nurse. She then obtained a teacher’s education and worked as a teacher in Beroun. Her whole life she has been searching for details to the events that preceded her father’s death, and she preserves the things that he left behind. Soja Svobodová died in 2019.
