Růžena Hrňová

* 1942

  • “I remember the expulsion of Germans as well. When they were leaving, they had backpacks, they stood in front of our chapel, they cried and prayed. They could take 35 kilos with them.” “That was a majority of the village.” “There were many of them. My counsin from the Zikmunds said that I should take his lorry. His dad made a beautiful lorry for him, he used it to drive hay, straw, as children do play all the time. So I took it, I had it for a long time and drove beet and everything on it.”

  • „Actually, the Soviets were not bad people. It was not their fault, someone gave them orders and they had to go. Among them, there were those who saw that it had been a mistake, that this should not have happened. They told us themselves that they disagreed. But, orders are orders. The soldiers did not have much of a good time, though. When I worked at a kindergarten, there was a traffic guard at a crossroad. I went home from the kindergarten and he was sitting there, I was sorry for that boy. At home, I made sandwiches with lard and canned meat and tea with rum, and I brought it to him. He was grateful for that because he was still there and maybe the others forgot about him. I can tell you, in spring, I was doing an issue slip at work and that soldier boz came to say hello on the ocassion of the International Women’s Day. He was grateful to a human that had handed him that food.”

  • „My husband was the chairman of the citizens’ committee, I was the kindergarten headmistress. So they would invite us, for example when they held a celebration of the Great October Revolution, to the celebrations of the Great October Socialist Revolution, to their assembly building in Ploužnice. There were our people [i. e. Czechs] of all stations, music played, we danced. With Commander Švestková, we sang the peace song, ‚White dove, fly over us’. Then, we were like a family. At home, we had made sausages, salami, all made from a wild boar which my husband acquired as a forester. I had it in my bag, then I saw that the boys were playing all the time [in the band] and they had not eaten at all so I made a charcuterie platter and brought it to them. The boys were happy, they would then sound the horn whenever they drove around the kindergarten.” “Did you miss that [meat] later on?” “Yes, but they gave us stuff in exchange, red beet for the kindergarten, or cabbage. We made cabbage salad for the kids, they had healthy food, we saved the money and could afford to buy something else.” “How did it go when the Soviets were leaving at the end?” “The Soviets came to say their goodbyes. When they left, I did not send the children to bed, they waved at them. There is no hate. It was not their fault, they’re the same people as we are.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Liberec, 07.07.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:39:58
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

There was no hatred. In Ralsko, the occupying army were like any other neighbours

Růžena Hrňová on her wedding day. 1960
Růžena Hrňová on her wedding day. 1960
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Růžena Hrňová was born during the WWII in the village of Jezová in the Mimoň area. Although her mother was from a mixed Czech-German family, they spoke Czech at home. After the war, numerous German-speaking inhabitants of Jezová, including the witness’ relatives, had to leave the village. The family lived as self-sustaining farmers, their situation however changed with collectivisation and most importantly, with the founding of the military area of Ralsko. Jezová was again being abandoned by its inhabitants, only the military stayed, first, it was Czechoslovak soldiers, later, the Soviet ones. After R. finished her primary education, she worked in the forest where she met her later husband, forester Jaroslav Hrňa. Mrs. and Mr. Hrňa left the dying village and found their new home in nearby Ploužnice, where they started their own family. R. started working in the local kindergarten where she found her lifetime calling. Life of the Hrňa family, as well as other inhabitants’, were considerably influenced by the Soviet soldiers which were stationed in the Ralsko military area andn grradually inhabited local towns and villages. The Hrňa family never had any personal issues with the occupants and their families, their co-existence was calm and at times friendly, even. As the times moved on, the Soviets left and the military area started turning to ghost villages and fallow land, Růžena Hrňová and her family went on to live there; they still have been living there until 2021 when the interview for Memory of the Nations took place.