Jaroslav Vrubel

* 1940

  • "It existed then, maybe only in Ostrava, but I remember it many times, that some kind of record, and that some office would decide whether the child you hide for four years or five years during the war will then stay with you or it won't stay that they put him somewhere, that didn't exist. That was Jarek and he was with us, that was Karlík and he was with us, like someone else and so on. That was when the father of the family, or some of the owners of the facility, farmers and the like, said that this is Karlík, yes, that is him, you are looking for him and he will be with us and he is with us. And that was true. A long, very long time. Only after the forty-eighth year, I realize that he used to come here, they showed me like exhibition piece, it was not like today, that everything is tapped and so on. Well, well, and then I realized that when I was twelve years old, when it first started, that's when I, that aunt, started asking questions, and that I wanted to know what the parents were like, and who it was my father and so on. Well, she always told me that with the fact that, look, you won't be stupid, you have a high forehead, dad isn't stupid either and I won't be like you any more... and that's it... and we love you. What they did.'

  • "I still didn't have the finances to start it. No time, I kept doing business and kept changing places, I moved thirty times in my life. And then, all the people who, or the certain group of people who could tell me something about it, slowly left. Well, I simply perceived it and felt in myself such here, the Jewish numbers, that's probably in a person. And the daughter, she is absolutely well cut."

  • "I got to the factory, so I was already walking from machine to machine, I was turning everything, they were looking at me, they didn't know my genesis like this. And then it turned out that I was actually... the people who went to Norrköping and went to the Goodyear were interested, so it was mostly an emigrant from Prague and the surrounding area. They were mostly educated people. Everyone had such a pile of knowledge in a drawer at home that they created themselves, that they collected themselves and so on, and everyone took it with them like a treasure. And that's the kind of people they were, so they couldn't get somewhere like that right away in their profession. So I convinced them that there would definitely be work for them in that factory and so on, and then when they revealed that I actually recruited them there, I received a diploma from Goodyear, but I started working as an ombudsman for that group people. And there were Poles and so on and so on. Well, everyone somehow lined up, and then I still had the function of showing them everything related to technology, my papers and what I had, like what was inside me and who Baťa was, what he was, and so on, so I really got the position . So I taught them technology. What they could hardly explain to them with such finesse, I could."

  • "This he royal commission took over... and no one knows who was involved. But they were solid, I'll give you an example: - in a normal office in Sweden, when it was about furnishing an apartment, about that, such civil matters. There sat a young lady who could have been twenty-five years old, such a petite, but she had one interesting thing. She had a horseshoe on her desk like in old offices. And in that she had six or eight of those stamps. And she, that girl, that lady or lady had the authority that when she banged this there, so it was equipped. It was completely different. The Swedes (emigrants, ed. note) believed."

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    Bratislava, 07.12.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:00:28
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th century
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They hid him in the monastery among the nuns

Witness Jaroslav Vrubel during eyd recording
Witness Jaroslav Vrubel during eyd recording
zdroj: Photo by Post Bellum SK

Jaroslav Vrubel was born in Moravská Ostrava on May 17, 1940. His biological mother‘s name was Šarlota Píchová. Biological father, Richard Fischer, was of Jewish origin. For four years, Jaroslav was a hidden child in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí in a monastery among nuns. He was adopted at the age of twelve. They lived in Otrokovice from 1948. Jaroslav‘s biological father, who lived in Manchester, England, tried to get partial custody of his son. However, he failed to convince Jaroslav‘s adoptive mother to move to England. In the 1950s, the family lost everything, the communists took everything away from them as a tradesman, and they lived only on a small pension. In 1954, he began an apprenticeship at the former Baťa factories. He enjoyed the study itself, which was combined with practice. Subsequently, Jaroslav also completed a pedagogic course and later worked as a master of vocational training and a master in production. After some time, he also received an apprenticeship in the field of mechanical locksmith and welder. In 1969, Jaroslav was called up for military training in České Velenice. During his day off on September 9, 1969, he managed to cross the border unnoticed and escape to Austria. He emigrated to Sweden, where he worked at the Goodyear company. After four years, he returned to Czechoslovakia. He was sentenced to two years for emigration and spent fourteen months in prison. In the early eighties, he got a job in a manufacturing company in Nitra, where he met his second wife, Marika. He spent the November events on the square in Nitra, where he participated in demonstrations. After the borders were opened, Jaroslav met his friends from Sweden from the time of emigration again. In the nineties, he did business in the field of tire services. Today he is retired and lives in Bratislava. Jaroslav has two sons from his first marriage, Jaroslav and Karel. He has a daughter Martinka from his second marriage.