"We had a beautiful house with a huge garden. There were these terraces and a lovely big yard, and there was a pump in the corner. My mother never used to pump there, which I didn't understand. Mrs Mauler used to do our laundry and bring water from the laundry room. It was always so noisy at night. I once said to Mummy: 'Mummy, I can't sleep. I hear it all the time.' 'You know, Jaruška, it's the pump pumping the water at night.' I didn't find out until later that the pump had never worked. It was a de facto hiding place because the Štencl family lived upstairs, and my dad and Mr Štencl... it was simply tunnelled, and there was a corridor along the fence, and there was a secret room where the partisans were hiding, where the pump was. How many there were, I don't know. All I know is that many times, I heard dialogues at night. My mum used to tell me I was just dreaming. It wasn't true. The pump served as a ventilator so they could breathe. My dad used to hide partisans."
"In that year, '48, they were evicted to Mladoňov. I used to visit them back then. I know I was very happy there. I know it was... I don't want to be vulgar... a something hole." - "To Mladoňov?" - "To Mladoňov. The last post office was in Nový Malín near Šumperk. My mother would put me on the train here, give me a little suitcase, and hand me to the conductor who would take me to Šumperk. I remember that it was one train car that had a chimney, and the locomotive steamed. I would arrive in this valley, and my grandfather would stand there, waving his hand like this, and the train would stop. Well, and there, I got off, and we just went to the right like that through the woods, and I know it's about four kilometres through the woods. It was all different back then, that was in '48, '49. I was twelve or thirteen years old. I was so happy because I could go into the woods there. Naturally, there were all these people who were found there, and they were mostly gypsies. They couldn't read or write, and our grandfather was the only one who could read and write, so he was the chairman of the national committee."
Jarmila Frajtová was born on 26 May 1936 in Prostějov as the older of two children to parents Jarmila and Julius Běhals. The family spent the Second World War in a rented house in Velká Bystřice. Her father allegedly hid partisans in a shelter in the garden for some time. In Velká Bystřice, Jarmila Frajtová experienced the bombing, the march of impoverished prisoners of war, marching under the supervision of German soldiers to the west, and also the liberation. In October 1943, the Nazis executed her great-uncle Jan Uher in Berlin for resistance activities. After February 1948, the communists nationalized her grandparents Julie and František Uher‘s textile shops in Prostějov and evicted them to a border village called Mladoňov. Three years later, Julius Uher died, and the grandmother returned to Prostějov. In Olomouc, Jarmila graduated from the Fučík Pedagogical School with a specialization in Physical Education. For the next 36 years, she taught at several elementary schools in Olomouc. While working, she also remotely studied the Faculty of Education at Palacký University in Olomouc. In January 1960, she married Jiří Frajt, whose father, Vladimír Frajt, was expelled from the army after 1948 due to being a member of the foreign resistance. In 1991, Jarmila Frajtová reached retirement age. Although she retired from education, she remained professionally active. She worked as a saleswoman in Herba in Olomouc for 25 years and spent her nights studying the healing effects of various herbs. At the time of filming, in 2023, she lived in Olomouc.
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!
