Marie Kňákalová

Marie Kňákalová, née Hemrová, was born on October 31, 1910 at Obrataň, in the Pelhřimov district. She worked as a clerk in Pacov. In 1929, she got married to Jan Kňákal, a master mason, born on June 24, 1883, at Pošná. Both were active members of the Pelhřimov District Firefighting Union. After the Nazi occupation, the Union provided illegal aid to those facing forced labor in the Reich. This involved issuing fake certificates that granted people higher firefighting ranks. Those who received higher ranks were then exempt from forced labor duty in Germany. In 1944, Marie and Jan supported and hid Staff Captain Rudolf Marek, who was a member of the Táborité resistance group.

In the autumn of 1944, the Gestapo office in Tábor received an anonymous accusation against Jan Kňákal, claiming that he was involved in illegal activities in the firefighting organization and sheltering wanted individuals. He was subsequently arrested, interrogated and moved to the prison in the Small Fortress in Terezín. Marie Kňákalová was also detained on the same grounds on December 2, 1944. She spent several days in the Gestapo office in Tábor before being transported to Terezín’s Small Fortress on December 15, 1944. She was assigned to cell No. 30 in the Women’s Courtyard. In order to make their stay in the cell more enjoyable and “to engage in activities other than staring at a wall”, as Mrs. Kňákalová wrote in a postwar letter, the women made an effort to entertain themselves. One of their pastimes was making various minor objects from scraps of cloth and remnants of threads from the sewing workshop. This gave rise to some of the artifacts, for instance: a small heart with Czechoslovak colors (PT 11388), an embroidered Easter egg (PT 11389), a cloth purse (PT 11390) and other exhibits on display.

In January 1945, Marie Kňákalová successfully smuggled some of the artifacts out of the prison. She had first approached a girl who was about to be released and sewed the objects along with a secret message into the pads of the girl’s coat. Upon her release, the girl contacted Marie Kňákalová’s parents and handed over the objects along with the message. The artifacts are now kept in the Terezín Memorial collection, having been donated back in 1985. Marie Kňákalová was lucky enough to live to see her liberation from the Small Fortress, but her husband Jan Kňákal was not as fortunate. He passed away on April 24, 1945, and is buried in the National Cemetery in Terezín.

Emilie Mitašová

Emilie Mitašová, née Königová, was born on February 10, 1904 at Průhonice near Prague. Before the Nazi occupation of the country, she worked in a restaurant kitchen and also as a seamstress at home. Since her husband František Mitaš (b. October 17, 1897) suffered from health problems at that time, they sought to find a new way to make a living. In February 1939, they decided to rent a pub in Chelčického Street in Prague’s Žižkov quarter. During the spring months of 1940, Jan Vycpálek (1905–1943) came to the inn to meet the Mitaš married couple. Several visits later, he told them about his espionage activities and asked for temporary financial help. Following the proclamation of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Jan Vycpálek and his friends had left for Poland to join the Czechoslovak army units formed by Lt.-Col. Ludvík Svoboda (1895–1979). After the defeat of Poland in September 1939, most of the remaining Czechoslovak soldiers crossed over to the Soviet territory. It was in the Soviet Union where Jan Vycpálek was recruited as a Soviet intelligence agent. Having returned home illegally, he used his contacts and started building a clandestine network among workers of the Baťa company’s branch factory in Sezimovo Ústí. He would send relevant intelligence information thus obtained through encrypted messages to the Soviet Union. But the Gestapo managed to infiltrate its agent into the group, and arrested all its members in the spring of 1941. On April 29, 1943, the People’s Court of Justice sentenced Jan Vycpálek to death for comprising to commit high treason. His execution happened in the Berlin-Plötzensee Prison on September 8, 1943. The rented pub of the Mitaš couple was a key meeting place for Jan Vycpálek and radio operator Miloslav Hůla (1915–1943). In its premises, the two men would hand over materials and, from time to time, leave them in the pub for safekeeping. The Mitaš married couple gave a helping hand to enlarge the intelligence-gathering cell by recruiting other reliable members who alternately provided their flats for clandestine meetings. Sometime later, Jan Vycpálek moved his entire underground network to a stationery shop in Kamenická Street in Prague’s Letná district, bought for the money received from the Soviet Union. The signs are that his arrest led the Gestapo to the trail of the rest of the group. After uncovering its members, the Gestapo came to arrest Emilie Mitašová on October 17, 1941, interrogating her in the Petschke Palace and keeping her in the Pankrác Prison. It is not clear whether she had been imprisoned only in Pankrác since the whole group went on trial as late as the spring of 1943. Charged with conspiring to commit high treason, Emilie Mitašová was sentenced to two years and six months imprisonment. But her sentence was reduced by one year and six months spent in custody. She was expected to serve the sentence in the women’s prison in Leipzig-Kleinmeusdorf, being deported there on May 27, 1943. She was to be released from prison on May 6, 1944, but most probably she was not freed at all. Instead, the Gestapo had Emilia Mitašová taken to Pankrác, and then deported to the prison in Terezín’s Small Fortress on June 20, 1944. On arrival she was placed in the Workshop Courtyard, where she stayed until the end of the war. Her secretly made cloth hand warmer (PT 2384) and a small album (PT 2385) are now kept in the collection of the Terezín Memorial.

Marie Svatošová

Marie Svatošová, née Sovíková, was born on October 6, 1904 at Vřesovice near Prostějov. Marie and her husband Josef Svatoš (1896–1942) joined the Czechoslovak resistance movement in the spring of 1942. They put up the parachutists from the Anthropoid and Out Distance groups in their Prague flat in Mellantrichova Street No. 15. Adolf Opálka (1915–1942), Josef Gabčík (1912–1942), and Karel Čurda (1911–1947) gradually found refuge in their flat, each for a short time. When planning the assassination of the acting Reich Protector Reinhard Heydrich, Josef Svatoš gave Jan Kubiš (1913–1942) and Josef Gabčík the two briefcases that were later found on the site of the incident on May 27, 1942. In a very short time, the briefcases were known to all the inhabitants of the Protectorate. After the assassination, Josef Gabčík rushed into the Svatoš family flat, washed, changed his clothes, and left for another hideaway. Nothing out of the ordinary happened for the next few days. This changed on June 16, 1942, when another parachutist, Karel Čurda, appeared in the flat. He asked about the other paratroopers and shortly after his visit went to the Gestapo and denounced all of them. As a result, Josef and Marie Svatoš were probably among the very first people who had helped the parachutists and whom the German secret police found out. They were arrested later that day. After questioning at the Prague Gestapo office, Marie and Josef Svatoš ended up in the Small Fortress in Terezín. Kept in the Women’s Courtyard, Marie Svatošová tried her best to pass the free time during her incarceration by producing various artifacts. Thanks to her fellow prisoner, the following objects made by Marie Svatošová have been preserved: a cloth doll (PT 2875), a small dog made of cloth (PT 2876), a small embroidered tablecloth (PT 2877), and a cloth bookmark (PT 2878). On September 29, 1942, both husband and wife were sentenced to death in absentia by a court martial in Prague. Their 9-year son Vladimír was first entrusted to child minders, then he passed through the Jenerálka prison and the detention camp at Svatobořice. He lived to see the end of the war in Planá nad Lužnicí. On October 22, 1942, Marie and Josef Svatoš were transported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where the Nazis killed, in three stages, as many as 294 relatives and collaborators of the paratroopers from the ranks of Czech patriots. Josef Svatoš and Marie Svatošová were executed on October 24, 1942. Their ashes were scattered in a ravine outside the camp.