Jiřina Svobodová

* 1937

  • "Then father went off to the army, so mother conducted everything. When the dog barked, there was a little window and there used to be aprons like that, it was on one side of the nail and the other side. And when the dog barked in the village, my mother was already up and unwrapping the cloth to see what was going on. And they did that under the weight of being shot or murdered if he didn't take them to the village. It was around the mill from those... And they weren't all like that either, but they were. So we were always afraid of that, I must say."

  • "Stalin was liquidating all the intelligence, and so my aunt, that was my dad's sister, with her husband, she was taken to Siberia. - Do you still remember their names? - Marie Mazurtsova. They had no children. She was there for seven and a half years, the aunt. And as soon as they were able to come back at the time when the last Czech soldiers came here, when they took us, Aunt Marie made it too. She came here and now we were afraid to say she was in Siberia."

  • "They watched our every step, what we were doing. And that Zilik, as I told you, the Jew, he went to Lupanin and he passed there at night, there were these logs in front of their big building and there the Banderites were concentrated, making a plans who they were going to attack and murder that night. So then he came on foot, so nobody would see him, and he came to tell us. And father said it is no longer safe to sleep at house. And we had a new pigsty built, and there was a big room next to it, and we slept there with the servants that were with us. We just didn't sleep at home anymore. Because father was afraid, before he went to war, that we had to sleep there..."

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    Okrouhlá, 14.07.2021

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My parents did not regret leaving Volyn, nor did they ever want me to go there for a visit

Jiřina Svobodová, 1980s
Jiřina Svobodová, 1980s
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Jiřina Svobodová was born on 1 January 1937 in the village of Mirotín in the western part of Volhynia, which at that time was part of Poland. Her parents, Cecilia and Konstantin Martinek, farmed a vast land and also employed the workers. Jiřina grew up as an only child and, unlike other children at that time, was surrounded by plentitude. During the war years, the family had to face raids by marauding nationalists. Moreover, in the spring of 1944, her mother was left alone with the entire farm, as her father, Konstantin, had enlisted in the First Czechoslovak Army. He experienced the fighting at Dukla and participated in the liberation of Czechoslovakia. In the autumn of 1946 (perhaps as early as 1945), little Jiřina followed him to the homeland with her mother and grandparents. The illegal journey by freight cars took them two weeks. They were reunited with her father in Žatec and lived in the villa left by the displaced Germans. Shortly afterwards, they moved to the nearby village of Velemyšleves, where her father had acquired a share of a large castle estate. As he refused to cede his share to the state estate, he sold his share and they returned to Žatec. Due to the poor cadre profile of her parents, Jiřina could not enter the Prague Conservatory. After secondary industrial school in Žatec she worked for many years as a warehouse manager. She lived in Teplice. In November 1989, her son Milan Tajnert took part in the ecological demonstrations that became a precursor of the Velvet Revolution. In 2021, she lived in her cottage in Okrouhla in the Českolipsko region.