We’re all led to love our country and we regarded President Masaryk as a god
Jarmila Pelčáková was born in 1922. Her father worked in the glass-works in Kyjov. He was a master-glassworker and the chief of the local trade-union. Her mother stayed in the household. Jarmila was a single child. She holds her childhood dear and likes to remember her parents. She also went to the Sokol (a youth movement like the Scout). Her character was strongly formed by her relationship toward the country. She graduated from high school in 1941, a year later she started to work in the rubber-works in Napajedla in the Fatra mountains. Jarmila‘s father started to cooperate with the resistance movement „Obrana národa“ (Defense of the Nation - DoN). He didn‘t want to expose his daughter to direct threat and therefore didn‘t fully introduce her to the events related to the resistance. Jarmila participated in the resistance as his aide. She only accomplished individual tasks that she got from her father. For instance, she assisted people in crossing the border. Jarmila‘s father was arrested by the Gestapo in 1942 and shot within a week. As she was also at great risk she had to move and then marry in 1943 in order to change her name. She thought that she‘d get divorced again after the war but by then she already had two children. After the war she got trained as a birth assistant. She wasn‘t allowed to study at a university. She was writing articles for the district agrarian newspaper and she started distance studies at the University of Agriculture. For some time she also worked for the TV-broadcasting network in Brno. In 2001, after almost sixty years, she by chance got in touch with her beloved Colonel Gustav Svoboda again, whom she had helped to emigrate during the war.