Jolana Mezerová

* 1934

  • "And a sister of mine, Věrka, she is still alive today, she had an operation, she still had an otitis media, so she was operated on and was just after the operation. And when my father saw and heard how the planes were still flying and bombing Ostrava, he went there and drove and signed the reverse because they didn't want to give her to him, and he said he'd rather let her die at home than have her die there. So according to him, the planes were flying right above their head, and as he was rushing to the train, there was blood spraying from her wound, because thy needed to catch a train, so that the bomb wouldn't fall on them. I mean Ostrava, it was terrible there, every night our door were shaking from bombing."

  • "When my father and mother got married, there was such a shortage that they only had meat once a week, and it was rather poor, because they were unemployed, also from the countryside, and they got what was called a beggar's allowance, and it was ten crowns for the whole week, and from they had to live with it. So we could only dream about the kind of sweets like there are today. My mother used to bake all kinds of figurines from regular dough and margarine using such cutters, and they were hung on wires, it was a place for sweets. There were just decorations. When my father was in Ostrava, he again looked to plant a nice tree for us so that we could have it. You know, we had a tree high up to the ceiling, as there were so many of us; we as children each had our own branches, we devided which branches belonged to whom and we knew who could take what. And we used to put apples there and nuts, not at all like they are today."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Příbram, 08.12.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 51:25
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

During the bombing of Ostrava, our windows were constantly shaking

Jolana Mezerová (en)
Jolana Mezerová (en)
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Jolana Mezerová, née Sýkorová, was born on November 22, 1934 in Stará Bystrica, Slovakia, as the eldest of ten children. At the beginning of the war, the family moved from Slovakia to Bohemia, to Ostravice. The father worked as a miner, the mother took care of the household and helped in the farm. War rations barely supported the family, Jolana also had to help. It recalls the bombing of Ostrava in August 1944 and its liberation by the Red Army. After the war, she started visiting a town school in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí, but shortly after that the family moved to Rudíkovy near Albrechtice to a house after evicted Germans. The town house was completed by Jolana in Albrechtice. After finishing school, she wanted to become a telephone operator, but there was no place left for her. She worked in the office of the power plant in Albrechtice and later in Mydlovary. In 1955, she got married and moved to Příbram with her husband. Three children were born to them, but the eldest Jaruška died at the age of five. In Příbram, Jolana Mezerová first worked as a cleaner in mining hostels and later directly in the uranium mines, where her husband also worked. At shaft 16, she was in charge of methane measuring devices, later she worked in the lamp factory. She briefly stopped at Bytíz and retired from shaft 21. She lived through the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in Příbram, but she was not interested in politics. In 2022, she lived in Příbram.