Naděje Dlouhá

* 1936

  • "When we came back from Pardubice, it was on All Souls' Day, we went to the cemetery, and he was still standing with my husband´s classmate, this would-be friend, and he was shouting, 'Hello, hello!' And the man said, 'Well, hello, are you still working for State Security or KGB? Now you're in Russia.' He wondered: 'What are you talking about?' So my husband explained to him that he had been to the archives in Pardubice and there he had read that he had ten contacts with state security officer Adámek. The next day this 'friend' came to us and asked if he was going to turn him in or what he was going to do with him. And my husband replied that he would have to be as much of a cripple as he was. But I said to him, how could he dare to say that my husband had sought him out when it was he who had come to us? He made the excuse that he didn't know what to say to them when they asked him for information. I was angry that he didn't realize the danger he was putting us in."

  • "During the war we already had a large wood gas tractor and after the war a smaller Svoboda tractor. Dad helped people a lot with it and then they helped us again. We didn't have horses, only cows, but after the forty-eighth year, we suspected a neighbor, and they came to take the tractor away. They didn't use it at all because it was too weak for any big farm. We were kulaks, although I don't know what they did, but they took the tractor. The way I see it today. And we didn't have anything to pull it with, because the cows couldn't do it, and we had meadows as far as the dam in Rozkoš. That's where we went through Provodov and Šeřeč and dried hay all day long. Well, the cows had to learn to pull. It wasn't pretty. I didn't have much of a relationship with the farm, but when I left school I wasn't allowed to go anywhere but to the farming school in Police nad Metují. So we used to go there, but when we went to practice, I never went once because I was afraid to go among the cattle."

  • "The Jewish couple Löwenbach were deported to us from the New Town in the forty-first year. Their parents had a house on the square in Nové Město. The lady's name was Zdenka and her husband had textile factories in Hronov. And when there was a removal, they put the Jews in the village to work. The Löwenbachs slept at my father's brother's house, but they came to our house for food. Of course, my parents didn't demand any work from them, the Löwenbachs were very nice people. They had fur coats, Meissen china, silver cutlery hidden at our place. We had it put on such kind of stove. If the Germans had discovered that, we would have followed the Löwenbachs, they were sent to Terezin in the forty-second year. I remember that, because I went to school the next day and they still took a picture of me. My mother was crying all the time, so I had a bad time too. And my parents used to send them parcels because they were allowed once in a while. And after the war the lady came to us, the gentleman died in Terezín because he was sick with lung disease. She also came to us with her sister, she wasn't displaced because she lived with a Czech. And they came together with my brother, who survived the death march. They arrived in the evening, and I was already lying there listening to the horror. The lady came to get the things. Of course my parents gave her everything as she had put it there. In Nové Město she got their house back, it had been occupied by the Germans, who had to leave it. And Mrs. Löwenbach told my mother to come to New Town. So we went to see her and she offered my mother, because everything was there after the Germans, to pick something. But mom said that she didn't need anything until now and that she didn't want anything from the Germans. So we went home empty-handed."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Velké Poříčí, 20.04.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 01:44:23
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Příběhy regionu - HRK REG ED
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Naděje had courage. At 16, she helped political prisoners

Naděje Dlouhá in 1954 in a wedding photo with her husband (far right) and friends
Naděje Dlouhá in 1954 in a wedding photo with her husband (far right) and friends
zdroj: archive of a witness

Naděje Dlouhá was born as Sochorová on 14 August 1936 in Václavice near Nové Město nad Metují. Her parents farmed ten hectares of land, had cows and a small tractor. Naděje started school in 1942. At that time, they had a Jewish family, the Löwenbachs, who had moved in for racial reasons. Before being transported to the Terezin ghetto, they kept their valuables with them, which they returned for after the war. At the beginning of the 1950s, the Sochors lost their tractor and continued to farm only cattle. Naděje wanted to become a seamstress, but the party committee sent her to a peasant school. While working in the printing shop, she met Rene Dlouhy, who was serving a sentence there at the time. After their release, they started dating and got married in 1954. Naděje mediated contact between the two men on trial, one of whom was working in the print shop and the other awaiting trial at large. Thanks to her, they were able to agree to go to court together and actually received a reduced sentence. After their marriage, Naděje Dlouhá and her husband moved to Rousínov in Moravia, where their three children were born. After six years they returned to Nové Město nad Metuji, but they were under constant State Security control. Naděje Dlouhá worked for many years as an assistant to a veterinarian. After November 1989, her husband was involved in municipal politics and in the Confederation of Political Prisoners, dedicated to publicizing the crimes of communism. Naděje Dlouhá was widowed in December 2021. In 2023, she lived alone in a family house in Nové Město nad Metuji.