"It took a while before the fire got big. My mother was the assistant caretaker, she had a shift that day, or night. She walked and walked and smelled smoke somewhere or smoke leaking or something like that. She was looking from where it was smoking. The oldest group of children lived upstairs, that's the stairs up there, so she opened the door and before she went up there... It was lucky that the group wasn't there because they were on apprenticeships, they went there on Saturdays and Sundays. There were already flames. So the call went out. There were so many firemen, so many cars. Because there's a little pond down there, but there wasn't enough water and it's uphill. There's a pond in the park, and they were taking water there and from down there. You could see them putting out the fire. They took all of the children out, and after that, they lived wherever they could. Wherever there was a vacant flat, the whole group would go there. Nobody got hurt."
"Neighbors, as they walked by, said, 'Don't even go to the woods or for a walk, because there are soldiers everywhere. They watch that no one leaves the village.' This village is at a crossroads from where you can get to Vary, Podbořany, Žatec, and Žlutice on the other side. Everywhere there was a soldier with a rifle. My mother felt sorry for them so she put pastries into a bowl because we expected a bigger wedding. When we were few, there was too much left. She took it to about two soldiers so she wouldn't walk across the village. They were Russians, they had no drink or food and didn't know where they were. After that, a lot of people didn't talk to my mother because she gave the 'Russians' food. But my mother felt sorry for them because they woke them up and drove. And they didn't even know where they went."
"When the marriage celebrant wed us, he came to us after the congratulations were over and said, 'Please, I don't want to drive you out of here, but please go home. We've got a message that tanks and trucks are heading towards us, probably with soldiers.' So we got in the cars and we hurried home. The wedding continued there. If you had a newspaper from then, you would have read that they drove terribly. If they didn't turn a corner fully, they'd chip off a piece of the house with the tank and those cars. Then they'd go from right to left, one village, another village. So we stayed in the house and the yard."
Petruška Jánošková was born on 13 May 1948 in Rybitví near Pardubice. Her father, Dominik Mľkvý, came from Slovakia as a tinker, and in Pardubice he worked as a fireman in a chemical factory in Semtín. Her mother Vlasta Mľkvá (nee Růžičková) suffered from a heart disease and was retired at home. Petruška Jánošková inherited the heart disorder and had to spend some time in spas due to health problems in the eighth and ninth grade. Despite the health complications, the witness decided to work with children. After graduating from high school in 1966, she started working as a tutor at the children‘s home in Valeč in the castle. In Valeč she also met her future husband Štefan Jánoško. On the day of their wedding, 21 August 1968, Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia. In 1969, the young couple had their first child and in the following years, two more. In 1976, just before the birth of their third child, an unfortunate event occurred in Valeč - the castle where the children‘s home was located burned down. All the children had to be evacuated and then sent to other orphanages. After the fire, the witness, like many locals, lost her job at the children‘s home. She started working as a guard at the civil defence building in Valeč and later became a teacher and director of the local kindergarten. She worked there until her retirement in 2008. During her time in the children‘s home and in education, Petruška Jánošková took care of many children and helped them with their first steps in life. In 2024, at the time of filming, she lived in Valeč.
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!
