Jiřina Sokolová

* 1940

  • "He was alone, so he was afraid something would happen, that he would lose his life, because they were armed. So he reported it to his group that was after them. The next day they put up a sign at those places, even on the lookout on the tree, and they went in there in broad daylight and observed. Then they made a raid and caught four (soldiers of Ukrainian Insurgent Army). They were fully armed."

  • "That was terrible. Even old people and little kids were screaming. It's interesting that I never screamed. It was like I was a support for mom. I never grabbed her and made a scene. I was like an adult. But it left a lot in me, it wasn't good. The kids started crying, and now you could hear the sounds of the raids and the swishing and the thumps. It was like right next to the castle courtyard. The walls of the cellar were shaking. And then suddenly it was quiet. Everyone was so relieved."

  • "And in a moment it began. You just took a breath after the raid and the next day it started: The carts, the horse-drawn carriages bringing them to the infirmary... you can't imagine how many there were, lying on the floor, their arms hanging down. They took them all, maybe some of them were still alive. There were no nurses in the infirmary, only helpers, and they were so busy! One of them with a wound, the other without a leg..."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Stříbrnice, 23.01.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:33:18
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I still have a phobia of thunderstorms and fireworks

Jiřina Sokolová in 1948
Jiřina Sokolová in 1948
zdroj: witness

Jiřina Sokolová, nee. Grulichová, was born on 3 April 1940 in Drnovice near Vyškov into the family of Jan Grulich, a trained glazier, later an instrument maker at St. Anna‘s Hospital, and his wife Marie. After Jiřina was born, the Grulichs moved to Vyškov, where they spent the war years. During the German occupation, Marie Grulich took care of her two young daughters alone for more than a year and a half, as Jan had to go to Germany for forced labour. Jiřina remembers especially the end of the war, when Vyškov was plagued by air raids, which they survived in the castle cellar. In 1947, father Jan Grulich fought against the Bandera fighters - armed Ukrainian partisans who were trying to cross our territory to Austria and Germany. Jiřina Sokolová trained in the shoemaking school in Gottwaldov (now Zlín) in the 1950s, but did not work in the trade. At the age of seventeen she married Josef Sokol and they had three daughters. She graduated from a two-year school of economics and worked as an accountant in Industrial Construction. She remembers the arrival of the tanks in 1968 and the Velvet Revolution twenty years later, but was not politically involved. She mainly lived a family life.