- "What about the furnishings in the Hejls' apartment?" - "The Germans took them." - "Everything?" - "The Germans took them. Our daddy... he was with the Holan company that did the moving. They also went to the Union and brought the material there, and when the movers came there to get the Hejls' furniture, my daddy knew one of the men, a mover or the driver, he knew him from the Union. He asked the man for the address where they were taking the furniture. He told him the address. Daddy went there from time to time, I think it was somewhere in Dejvice - not Dejvice, I don't know exactly where anymore. Daddy used to go to that address and he would always ring the bells to find out who lived there. There was always one and the same German who had moved in the Hejl furniture. After the war, Daddy immediately went to the local committee or the town hall and told them that the Hejls' furniture was there, so they sealed the apartment. Then after that, the girls actually got the furniture back. That's when Eva came to get our mother, saying there were some things that were... Eva didn't remember what was theirs. So mummy went there with them and there in the wardrobe - mummy said - there were dresses, for example, one dress combined from two. Mummy recognized it was Mrs. Hejl's dress. The German woman had one made out of two. She had them combined. That was done a lot in wartime. There was a lot of stuff in there. The furniture was there, and that's what Eva owned afterwards."
"Someone found out that they went out for walks. Well, we went to Jenerálka every Sunday, and there was this sort of restaurant for trippers. We'd always have tea there. They had newspapers there and we'd always insert letters for the girls in them. We'd have tea and toast, and we'd leave and go across to the other side via Šárka. When they were walking outside, we would pass each other in the street and I was even able to slip a letter to Eva from my hand... But then the Nazis found out that their relatives were visiting them, so they didn't take them out anymore, only walking them in the garden. So we'd always leave a parcel of something with the restaurant owners. I don't remember - some biscuits, just a packet. And they pass it on through this one nurse who was helpful. But then Hana said that they took it from them anyway."
"That's where I saw the lady from one of the villas. They were an elderly couple, the Zikmunds. They were childless, lived alone in the villa, and she was really such a nice lady. I saw her there, and I can still see the image today: she was there... They were quite harmless Germans, I mean older and harmless folks. But then it all went away, didn't it. There was a barricade being built in Strašnice. They were ripping the cobblestones out of the road. She was covered in sweat, with just her bodice on, tearing out the cobblestones and bleeding all over her body. I had remembered her as this lady, and it left me feeling strange. I thought, these people didn't even pay attention to anyone. But then... they were Germans, so it all went away."
She was born Jaroslava Kadeřábková in the Central Bohemian village of Klokočná on 31 March 1929. She grew up with her parents and sister in the Třebešín residential area on the northern outskirts of Prague‘s Strašnice district. The spacious villa at Pod Viktorkou 4 was also home to the Hejl family whose daughters Eva and Hana were close friends of both Kadeřábková girls. On 14 July 1942, the Gestapo arrested the Hejls for their participation in the resistance and for helping the paratroopers from the Anthropoid group. While František Hejl was arrested at work, his wife Milada was picked up at the villa. Jaroslava Kadeřábková describes the arrest of her friends‘ mother and how relatives and neighbours subsequently broke into the already sealed apartment to remove the Hejl‘s Sokol costumes. From August 1942 to April 1944, the Hejl daughters were interned in the Jenerálka castle in Dejvice, where Jaroslava, her mother and sister tried to contact them regularly and hand them letters and parcels. Jaroslava Buřičová also has dramatic memories of the May 1945 revolution when her father Josef was involved in the defence of the Strašnice radio station. After the war, she graduated from a vocational school for women‘s professions and found a job in a shoe factory, which was soon nationalised by the communists. In 1948, she married and moved from the villa with a turbulent history to the nearby Na Třebešíně Street where she still lived in 2023.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
