I asked my mom where they were taking us
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Božena Židoňová, née Ptáčková, was born on February 10, 1935 in Velké Popovice as the second child of seamstress Anežka Ptáčková and brewery worker Oldřich Ptáček. Oldřich’s older brother was a year and a half older. Their father died in 1937. A few years later, her mother remarried and the youngest brother, Jiří, was added to the family in addition to her stepfather Ludvík Medřický. When little Božena was ten years old, World War II was ending. The day when the SS men were retreating through Velké Popovice is distinctly etched in her memory. A shot fired by one of the partisans at the military column cost the lives of nearly thirty people and brought many others hours of fear for their lives. Even ten-year-old Božena was afraid. She still remembers how her family was driven out of their home by SS troops and guarded for hours with rifles in their hands. And she was so afraid that this fear has been with her for eighty years. After the war, her mother and stepfather lost their trades. Božena Židoňová, as the only girl in the family, was not allowed to study; she was expected to marry. She trained as a saleswoman and later worked as an accountant. She moved from Velké Popovice to Prague in the early 1960s. Before that she had married the same man twice and divorced him twice. It was only in Prague that she met her true life partner, Karel Židona. She and her husband were, as she says, more for themselves and did not get involved in anything. In 2025, Božena Židonová lived in a home for the elderly in Prague.
