Jana Valášková

* 1933

  • "At our cottage in front of the poplar alley, a barricade was being built on the road. The men came, just the men who lived there, came to the barricade and built it. We helped them. Then they went to Zbraslav and disarmed the Wehrmacht group there, so they got weapons. The first wounded man, I remember, was Mr. Zavadil, who was wounded in the abdomen. At that time, he was treated by Dr. Vančurová, who was the wife of the writer Vladislav Vančura."

  • "There have been terrible massacres there. The commander fell there and they began to take revenge. Even before the bridge, they pulled civilians out of their houses. They shot almost the whole Červenka family - the old man, grandmother, mother, only one of their daughters was alive. And then it was said that the family was related to people from Lidice. So it was a real tragedy. Then I know there was a dead girl and a boy of about fifteen. They captured the barricade and shot all the insurgents who did not fall and could not hide somewhere. The Vlasovs also helped, it was here that they helped defend the barricade and 16 of them fell there. It was calm, so the women went and collected the dead. The grandmother went to look for her son, the uncle. She found him under the bridge somewhere in the huts. Other women helped her load him up on the cart and brought him home."

  • "I remember the funeral of President Masaryk, which was very famous. It passed from the Castle through the whole of Prague, then he was transferred to the Main Railway Station by train. He took the train to Lány. And we were saying goodbye to my mother and my neighbors by going to Nusle and there were stairs down. We were on the stairs. We saw a train coming out of a tunnel, and we saw a coffin on a train in an open car. It was on a carriage, covered with flags, and there were military guards."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Praha 13, 21.03.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 27:13
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Praha 13, 21.03.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 35:17
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I believe we are a capable nation

Jana Valášková (en)
Jana Valášková (en)
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Jana Valášková was born on August 14, 1933 in Prague‘s district of Žižkov. She spent her childhood in a service apartment in a long-distance telephone Exchange centre, because her father was employed by the company as an electrician. In 1937, Jana experienced the funeral of Tomáš Garrigu Masaryk at the age of four. In the pre-war years she went to Sokol and in 1938 she practiced at the 10th All-Sokol Rally. She lived through the war in Prague, where in February 1945 she experienced a bombing by the US Air Force. Out of fear of Jana, she was sent by her parents to her grandparents in Lahovice for several months. There Jana experienced battles on barricades, where her uncle also died. After the war, she graduated from a pedagogical high school, then started working as a teacher at a kindergarten in Chomutov. In 1969 she attended the funeral of Jan Palach. The Velvet Revolution caught up with her in Prague, where she took part in demonstrations and, together with the whole nation, welcomed the onset of democracy.