After my family was deported, I felt like I was living in a shell
Download image
Marie Vávrová, née Dvořáková, was born on 11 March 1939 into a mixed marriage. Her mother, Kateřina Dvořáková, née Tibitanzlová, was from a German family that farmed on a large farm in Planá near České Budějovice. Kateřina married Josef Dvořák and moved to his farm in Lišov, where Marie was born. Little Marie often stayed with her grandfather and grandmother in Planá and spent an idyllic childhood there. Her life in a close-knit family with many relatives ended with the Deportation in 1946. Thanks to her marriage to a Czech, Marie Vávrová’s mother was the only one in the family who could remain in Bohemia. All the other relatives were deported to Germany. The individual family members were scattered throughout Germany, so at first, even the deported relatives had no news of each other. The relatives in Bohemia knew nothing about their fate for several years. They did not even know that the grandfather, Martin Tibitanzl, did not even arrive in Germany because he died in the wagon on the way there. They only received the first news, thanks to the Red Cross, in 1952. In the 1950s, Marie graduated from a two-year business school. In 1956, at a very young age, she married Tomáš Vávra and subsequently had two children: a daughter, Zdena, and a son, Petr. From her youth until her retirement, she worked in the Sfinx company in České Budějovice, first in dispatching and later as a cashier. After her retirement, Marie devoted herself primarily to her family, helping to look after her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. She became a widow in 2014. She lived her whole life in her birthplace in Lišov near České Budějovice.
