Alena Jiroušková

* 1934

  • “One day early in the morning I suddenly heard a terrible cry. I got up from my children’s bed and ran into the kitchen and there I found my mom lying on the ground and screaming: ‘They killed our daddy.’ Something happened with me at that moment: as if darkness engulfed me. It was strange, because I have forgotten absolutely everything. I forgot how we had played with dad, sung together, exercised together. Of course I knew that I my father had been there, but some kind of a wall was erected and it was over. No memory, nothing. Only many years later I understood that it was actually a defence mechanism of my child’s body to prevent it from a collapse”

  • “One day he came to us and announced: ‘Russians are here.’ We all ran out of the basement and there were six Russian soldiers standing there. They had submachine guns over their shoulders and they were looking around; they were some vanguard. People immediately began offering them plum brandy and whatever they had, but the soldiers didn’t take anything. They didn’t take anything from us, because they did not trust us, they did not know who we were. Then the uncle who had been on the Russian front began speaking to them in Russian and we could see that the tension was going away. It occurred to him to take some of the food and put it into his mouth, and he drank some of the plum brandy. When they saw that the food was not poisoned, they immediately began to feast with us. Then the fun went on and we even began learning Russian.”

  • “Later we received a package and inside the package there was dad’s suit, his shirt and his undershirt and… you cannot wash blood. The Germans were so precise that they had washed everything, but the clothes had large brown blood stains everywhere. We thus knew that he had been through hell there, together with all the others. He was then taken to Brno, and there he was executed, shot, on October 20th.”

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    Malenovice, 13.02.2015

    (audio)
    délka: 42:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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As if darkness engulfed me

Jirosukova orez.jpg (historic)
Alena Jiroušková
zdroj: dobová archiv pamětnice, současná Příběhy našich sousedů

  Alena Jiroušková, née Kolísková, was born September 29, 1934 in Uherský Brod. Her father Josef Kolísek (1902-1941), an insurance company clerk, became involved in the resistance movement in April 1939. As a member of the local branch of Defence of the Nation he was organizing acts of sabotage and helping with guiding refugees over the border. On September 11, 1941, Josef Kolísek was arrested by the Gestapo and after pre-trial detention and interrogation in Uherské Hradiště he was transferred to Brno, where he was executed in the Kounic student residence hall on October, 1941. Alena Jiroušková and her mother spent the rest of the war in fear of further repercussion aimed at families of resistance fighters. In May 1945 they witnessed the liberation and the arrival of the Red Army soldiers to Uherský Brod. On November 1945 Josef Kolísek was decorated with the Czechoslovak War Cross in memoriam. Alena Jiroušková worked as a teacher, now she is retired and she lives in Zlín-Malenovice.