School

On a small hill in the foothill village of Malá Lhota, you cannot miss the school building where children from the village used to go. The plaster is scratched and the boarded-up windows prevent random passers-by from looking inside. Three rows of desks, a teacher’s desk, a blackboard, an abacus and a large cupboard with books still crowd the small classroom, where no sunlight can penetrate.Anywhere else a similar school would have been closed down, but in Malá Lhota it still stands, a silent witness to the fateful event of 1958. It is called a special school. Not perhaps because the teachers here once imparted knowledge to youngsters in need of special care, but because it strikes the memorialists as a place with a special past.

Nora Pátková was in charge of the education of the pupils. She was a thirty year old spirited woman, a graduate of the teacher’s institute in Kroměříž, and nobody really knew why she had come here in the summer of 1948. Until then, the children were taken care of by Alžběta Ruppertová and her husband. However, it was not desirable for them to continue teaching. Mr. Ruppert became a janitor and died of a heart attack in 1952. Elisabeth blamed everyone around her for hurting him and may have been responsible for his untimely passing. In order to keep her small apartment in the building, she took over her husband’s job and did the cleaning and maintenance of the school, which she didn’t like very much.

If a casual visitor were to come here the day after Easter, April 8, 1958, shortly after 10:30, he would be surprised to find that there was no Czech class going on, but rather a grave silence. There was not a foot in the classroom. Only a few sweaters in the corridor showed that children had definitely come. Where had Josefina Plánková, Jan Čermák, Terezie Krondlová, Františka Joštová, Bedřich Lončák and Růžena Hornová gone? And what happened to the comrade teacher?