Vlasta Šafránková

* 1928

  • "I remember how, when the Germans were leaving, how they stuck some flyers to that fence and Stalin was painted there and from his hand blood dropped. And I was walking by it and I told myself: 'I should be scared, shouldn't I be scared?' I was about fourteen years old, not even that. And some German soldier walked by and told me: 'Vlasta, don't be scared, it's not that scary.' That German soldier, this sort of man, told me that. I can see it to this day, the pictures of Stalin on the fence, how blood is dripping from his hand."

  • "I had seen, how the Germans hung three Poles, young boys/ They shepherded us there, that we would have to come and watch that. But I ran away, I didn't come there. Then long after that there was a memorial stone there. And the gallows. Three hung together side by side. It was horrible, when I think back to it today, everything that people lived through. You don't even want to believe it."

  • "One soldier, my father had told me this - he came to my father. And we had a windlass on our well. The water was brought up with the windlass. And that soldier came to my father, that he would there in that well - we had a twelve-meter deep well - that he would dig out some soft of place for himself and that he would wait out there, so that he wouldn't have to continue in the war. So that he wouldn't have to go to Germany for resettlement. Because they chased them towards the forest with revolvers. And behind them the Russians were coming."

  • "I worked on the tracks in Karviná. In the morning I was on my way to work and surprised that the bus, which was always packed full, but already on the way and we were behind Orlová, and opposite us lots of soldiers were going in black shirts. And they brought in horses, lots of troops. I told myself: 'They hadn't said, that there were maneuvers scheduled.' Nobody talked about anything. Then we got out in Karviná and music was playing from the speakers. And I thought, that somebody was also reading some book out in that broadcast. I told myself: 'It's weird, I don't about anything that could be happening.' And when I came in to work there was a storm of anger there. That the Russians had attacked us. I can remember that foremost. That they broke through the border barriers and were speeding onwards. And at the station we had a sign saying Karviná-město. That was painted over and instead there was written 'Jerusalem'."

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    Bohumín, 26.08.2021

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    délka: 01:30:12
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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To this day I can see those pictures of Stalin on the fence, how blood dripped from his hands

Vlasta Šafránková, née Bernatíková, was born on the 30th of January 1928 in Slezská Ostrava. In the first half of the 30s her parents moved to Petřvald with her, where she started attending the first grade. After the Munich Agreement, Poland annexed parts of the eastern Těšínsko area, including Petřvald, and Vlasta had to transition to a Polish school. Shortly thereafter, after the Nazi occupation, a new transition had to be made, this time to a German school. During the war her father was involved in resistance activity and her future husband Vladimír Šafránek was forcefully conscripted into the Wehrmacht. After the war Vlasta moved to Ostrava for work, where she also experienced the 1948 February coup. In the year 1951 the communists sentenced her cousin Josef Uhlář to fifteen years of hard labor; he had been a member of the anti-communist resistance group of Hora Hostýnská. During the 50s she worked as a caretaker in the iron refineries in Bohumín, since the 60s at Československé státní dráhy (ČSD - Czechoslovak State Railways) in the station Karviná-město. Thanks to her work engagement at ČSD she repeatedly looked toward the West before the year 1989. Due to health issues she retired to a disability retirement in the year 1983. She experienced the Velvet Revolution in Bohumín, where she also lived at the time the interview was recorded (2021).