Mgr. Jaroslava Slavíková

* 1927

  • “There’s a memorial by the parish office commemorating the death of a young Soviet soldier. Every time I pass it, I tell him with sadness: ,Your mum was waiting for you at home, and you died on her here in Pardubice.’ What a time! Those were wonderful days. Everyone was happy the war was over. Occasionally, the soldiers got some time off and they walked around Pardubice. Everyone welcomed them, spoke to them. Everyone learnt a few words of Russian.”

  • “Suddenly, there was a loud bang at the door. It opened and in came a short, slight person. Those collaborators, they wore leather jackets, leather coats, and leather trousers. ,Heil Hitler!’ he says. Naturally, the teacher had expected no such thing. He introduced himself and said he was looking for Hana Klepetářová. ,Is she present?’ – ,Yes, she is,’ replied the teacher. Hana got up, pale, shivering. And he told her: ,This was your last day in this class. You are coming with me and you’ll never return here.’”

  • “Right after the school had been occupied by the Germans, my father had to travel around Svítkov, Popkovice and other villages around Pardubice and look for potential classrooms. He had a thing about children not missing school. Despite the terrible thing that had happened, he wanted the children to study because only an intelligent person can achieve something in life. One classroom was at the pub, one at the mill, one in a shop. Altogether he had to find five of them.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Pardubice, 20.06.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:36:50
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The secretary was eavesdropping behind the door of my classroom and informing the communist authorities

Jaroslava Novotná in 1942
Jaroslava Novotná in 1942
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Jaroslava Slavíková was born on September 7, 1927, in Hoješín in Železné Mountains. Her father Čeněk Novotný (1902-1983) was a teacher and her mother Bohumila Novotná (1904-1990) a seamstress. When Jaroslava was four years old, the family moved to Přelouč region and soon after to Svítkov in Pardubice area, where her father became the headmaster of the local school. As a patriot, national revivalist, and a conscientious teacher, he was a role model for his daughter. As a four-year-old, she saw president T. G. Masaryk at an exhibition in Pardubice. She started attending school in September 1933 and in 1938, transferred to grammar school in Pardubice. She knew her parents were worried about the international affairs threatening Czechoslovakia. Although she was enjoying her youth, no one was free of worry about the war at the time. Every knock at the door panicked people into thinking it was the Gestapo. As a student, Jaroslava witnessed how a German school inspector marched a Jewish classmate straight out of the classroom. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, she witnessed the arrest of the resistance fighter Luděk Matura at the cinema. Her father was also interrogated by the Gestapo, who wanted to know why his students did not like their German classes and questioned his political commitment. He heard the same reprimands once again only a few years later from the communist ideologists at the school in Svítkov. Jaroslava graduated from grammar school in 1946 and left for Prague, where she started studying at the Faculty of Arts of Charles University. As she was staying at the flat of some family friends at the Prague Castle, she was acutely aware of the events accompanying the communist coup and Jan Masaryk’s death. She was threatened by being reported on by the school caretaker in front of whom she had defended the student march in support of President Edvard Beneš in February 1948. In 1940 as a fourth-year student, she was already teaching at a primary school in Pardubice. One year later, she had got her degree and started teaching at a medical vocational school. In 1951, she married Miroslav Slavík (1926-2017) and in 1956, their son Jaromír was born. Her favourite position was at the Electrotechnical School in Pardubice, where she taught Czech for 28 years. Nevertheless, not even there was she free of political bullying by the local Czechoslovak Communist Branch, despite the fact she was a youth leader at the local Pioneer division. In 2022, she was living with her son in Pardubice.