Jana Jobová

* 1944

  • „How my dad strove to get his daughter into a mechanical engineering school. I took the exams, I had excellent grades, honours. And I took the exams there at that mechanical engineering school. But they kicked me out. Because there was a headmaster who was clearly against religion and there was one section, the teacher asked me if she should write it, some did not write it, but the teacher wrote in my application that I did religious studies. And the headmaster, who was literally against it, kicked me out. But my father, as he worked there, found out right away, he kept an eye out on his daughter after all. So he went to the headmaster who returned my application and I got accepted."

  • „In February 1964, in 1963 he got out of prison. That was December 18, and he arrived in Brno in February. It was my birthday on February 2nd, that was interesting. That's how we met there. To tell you the truth, I didn't like him. I rejected him. When he started writing me letters and writing a lot of them and started driving to see me, I just didn't want him. But it was interesting, I realised that God wanted it, that it was God's will."

  • „We didn't think about that at all, we had to go, so we went. In general, we already did so even before that... My husband also insisted that if you decide to do something, do it. No hesitation, or those thoughts, what if. No, as we decided, we drove and didn't think about it at all. Basically, all of us, when we were in exile, were very hopeful that things would change soon. We all longed, we all waited for the time that things would change again, that we would be able to return. We never redeemed ourselves from that citizenship, so we’d be able to go there. We just said to ourselves, no way. The political situation in Czechia is still bad, we can’t go."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Dürenten, 25.05.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:28:20
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Young people should be told the truth

Jana Jobová in 2021
Jana Jobová in 2021
zdroj: Taken by her daughter 25.05.2021

Jana Jobová, née Pokorná, was born on February 2, 1944 in Pernštejnské Janovice in Vysočina as the eldest of three siblings. They lived with their family in Brno from the age of two. She spent most of her time with her grandparents in Vysočina. Her grandfather ran a library in the village, so little Jana got to read quality literature from an early age. Her father was a teacher at an industrial school in Brno, where Jana joined in 1958. Her mother was a seamstress and worked from home. In 1962, the witness successfully graduated. At the end of 1963, she met her future husband, Miroslav Job. He was previously convicted in a fabricated political trial and spent twelve years in the worst communist camps. (Jáchymovsko, Leopoldov and others). In 1964, right after the wedding, the family moved to Prague. After the August invasion of Warsaw Pact troops in 1968, they hastily decided to leave Czechoslovakia. They already had two small children and were expecting a third. The family found a new home in Switzerland. The husband worked as a teacher in a Czech school. After 1989, the Jobs bought a homestead in Vysočina and returned to their homeland several times a year. Miroslav Job died surrounded by his loved ones in 2014. At the time of the interview (2021), Jana Jobová lived close to her children and twelve grandchildren in a small town a few kilometres from Zurich.