My daddy never recovered from the attack of the Freikorps

Eliška Mišunová spent part of her childhood in the border village of Kobylá nad Vidnávkou, which was inhabited predominantly by a German-speaking population. She grew up in one of the few local Czech families. She recalls how on September 22, 1938, her father František Vaculík was dragged by members of the German Ordners to the local post office: “They were beating him and dragging him on the ground, then they put him in chains and dragged him along. They remembered that there was a Czech postman working at the office so they dragged him to the post office, ordered him to go inside, and bring the Czech postman out of the building.” However, Postmaster Karel Mroček refused to come out “There were two more Czech soldiers who immediately fled through the back door of the post office. The Ordners opened fire on the building. Mroček and my father eventually came out and the beatings continued. Soon the conflict turned into a shootout, and one of the Germans was shot. He must have been shot by one of the Ordners though, as neither my dad nor the postman were armed. The news about the violence spread quickly throughout the neighborhood. It was brought to the school building in Kobylé, where Headmaster Tauc lived. According to my father, he came running to the post office and cried out that the Ordners had to stop the lynching. My dad and the postman were then treated because they were covered in blood. Then they were taken to a hospital in Jeseník. The headmaster actually saved their lives,” recalled Eliška Mišunová. She further explained how her father would never truly recover from the ordeal he suffered that day. It even led to his eventual suicide, which he committed late in his life in the 1970s.