My father was arrested by the Nazis. My husband‘s parents were the first to be executed in the Castle
Jiřina Mikulecká was born on 2 July 1930 into a family of carpenters in Sloupnice, East Bohemia. Her childhood was marked by the death of her older brother Václav. Later, three more daughters were born to her mother Jiřina and father Václav. In 1941, Father Václav was held hostage by the Gestapo along with seventy other residents of Sloupnice for a young resistance fighter from nearby Litomyšl, Josef Kužel. Josef Kužel was hiding with the Průšek and Mikulecký families, who were executed by the Gestapo during the Heydrichiad at the Pardubice Castle. The surviving son, Stanislav Mikulecký, was married to Jiřina in 1949. They had two sons, Stanislav and Václav. In the 1950s and during the normalisation, she worked in the local JZD. All her life she devoted herself to singing, embroidery and sewing. In 2023 she lived in Sloupnice near Litomyšl.