"I sewed at first, but a lot of people didn't pay you. They got sewn, left and didn't pay. It was after that that I quit, thinking I was going to be a tutor. At that time, one just did it to me again and auntie Wolf was with us. She wasn't an aunt, but we called her aunt. And she immediately said, 'You know what? We'll go and you'll teach sewing!' And so we went to the national committee together right away. And they asked me this stupid question: 'They said if I can sew for children?' I thought it was stupid, but I said I could. So they took me on, and then I was teaching people to sew. It was under the National Committee."
"It was the end of the war and we fled [Bamberg] before it was over. We could have waited one or two more days, but we were stupid. Those who stayed there still took their wages and I don't know what all they took. And we were in a hurry to get home, well, so we left a lot behind. We just wanted to go home. Well, now my parents were worried about me getting arrested. So they told me to go to Nedanice. I used to go there as a little girl. My grandmother died when I was about six months or a year old, and my grandmother's sister lived there, and she was very nice, and she took me in. When I was staying there, a woman named Zdeňka befriended me. When they bombed the station here, we were together with this Zdeňka and we watched, I think, while doing feathers, the bombs falling on the Pilsen station. You could see that, you know? You could see it from a distance." - "Even hear?" - "No, it was far away. That was far away."
"During the war I was in Forced labor deployment in Germany, in Bamberg. It was a beautiful city, the people there were really nice. They didn't even want me to go back to Czech. I just sewed for them there, and as I say, I got on well with them. I sewed for them, repaired their clothes, it depended on what they needed. I don't remember anyone being rude to me or being nasty."
Irena Votrubcová comes from Plzeň, where she was born on 26 August 1923 to her parents Anna and Rudolf Pecka, who owned a ladies‘ tailoring shop in Barrandova Street. The young Irena decided to follow in their footsteps professionally and also trained as a ladies‘ dressmaker. Her expertise, skill and family experience helped her greatly in her youth when she was (as part of the mass conscription of the 1921 to 1924 class) in Forced labor deployment in the textile plant of the Bosch concern in Bamberg, Germany. She worked under good conditions and remembers her time of Forced labor deployment fondly. She escaped from Bamberg, along with a group of others, about a month before the end of the war when the massive Allied bombing began. On the way home, she survived the bombing of an underground shelter by lucky chance. After her secret return to her homeland, she hid in the village of Nedanice with her great-aunt, due to a well-founded fear of arrest. She subsequently stuck to her tailoring craft all her life, even in the later socialist era, when she made a living as a lecturer of sewing courses in the Park of Culture and Recreation in Plzeň. She married the economist Jaromír Votrubec, with whom she had sons Jaromír (1951) and Lubomír (1957). All her life she and her family lived on Klatovská třída in Plzeň, from where she moved to the St. Elisabeth Home in Plzeň na Slovanech in May 2019. She died on October 4, 2024.
The witness in the photo taken in the spring of 2024 at the age of 100 in the St. Elisabeth Home in Pilsen. She is pictured with her own portrait, which was drawn for her in 1943 by her Belgian friend Hank
The witness in the photo taken in the spring of 2024 at the age of 100 in the St. Elisabeth Home in Pilsen. She is pictured with her own portrait, which was drawn for her in 1943 by her Belgian friend Hank
Photo of the Pecka family, from left: from left: Rudolf Pecka (father), Irena Pecková (mother), Anna Pecková (mother) and Miloslav Pecka (brother), Pilsen, 1941
Photo of the Pecka family, from left: from left: Rudolf Pecka (father), Irena Pecková (mother), Anna Pecková (mother) and Miloslav Pecka (brother), Pilsen, 1941
A photo of the witness (centre) with her friends from her stay in Germany - Jarka (left) and Hela (right), the two windows on the top right belonged to their rooms, 1944
A photo of the witness (centre) with her friends from her stay in Germany - Jarka (left) and Hela (right), the two windows on the top right belonged to their rooms, 1944
In front of the Exhibition Grounds in Prague - on the way to the Křižík Fountain, from left: granddaughter Jana, witness Irena Votrubcová, grandson Michal and daughter-in-law Irena Votrubcová, 1991
In front of the Exhibition Grounds in Prague - on the way to the Křižík Fountain, from left: granddaughter Jana, witness Irena Votrubcová, grandson Michal and daughter-in-law Irena Votrubcová, 1991
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