Jarmila Zábranská

* 1926

  • “We played the fairy tale Salt Over Gold and teacher Chalupová, who directed the play, told me: ‘Kameníková, look, you have the part of the first page, and so you will carry a cake and you will sing: The king loves cakes and doughnuts! Have your mom bake something for you and put lots of toppings on it. Some whisked egg whites or whipped cream.’ Sure. I was walking with the cake and she instructed me: ‘Move on, don’t be stiff!’ So I started moving rapidly and as I was enthusiastically singing, the whipped cream from the cake just fell down and landed in the lap of the mayor’s wife who was sitting in the first row. My dad then had to pay for cleaning her clothes and to give her some gift on top of that. So that was for Jaruška acting in theatre.”

  • “And those people who did not have it when an inspection came were immediately arrested. And it happened to me once that I forgot it, but fortunately this Mr. Podrazký was from Vlašim. And he recognized me and told me: ‘Come here, come here, you don’t have your ID card?’ I told him: ‘I probably forgot it.’ – ‘I will let you go, but please, be careful, it is dangerous and it might happen that you would not even be allowed to return back to school anymore if you didn’t have your card.’ Well, and since that time I have always carried it with me, and I have kept is as a remembrance.”

  • “And the Red Cross came. And the nurse from the Red Cross saved the life of my husband, who was my boyfriend at that time. It was because she started taking people from the side where he was lying on the edge and since he already had high typhoid fever, she took him among the first ones, and he thus recovered during three months. But he actually returned from the concentration camp in August, because he had to spend time in hospitals for treatment.”

  • Full recordings
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    Vlašim, 24.04.2018

    (audio)
    duration: 02:10:55
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Lover of theatre and educator who tamed even the naughtiest boys

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Jarmila Zábranská
photo: PNS

Jarmila Zábranská, née Kameníková, was born in August 1926 in Vlašim. She comes from a businessman’s family, and her parents owned a bookshop, a book-binding shop and a stationery. Jarmila was always an excellent student and she was active in theatre, which became her lifelong passion. She was also a member of Sokol and Girl Scouts. During the war she attended the grammar school in Benešov and subsequently the Advanced Trade Academy in Prague. Some of her friends were arrested during the Protectorate era, including her husband-to-be Josef Zábranský. He has survived the internment in Terezín as well as a death march. Jarmila has devoted her entire life to working with children and youth and she was a well-liked educator and she often used theatre as an educational instrument. A pedagogical handbook which she wrote focuses on theatre as well, and some of her articles in the Slovak magazine Vychovávatel (“Educator”) deal with theatre. She still engages in amateur theatre. Jarmila Zábranská received the award Blanický rytíř (“Knight of Blaník”) for her lifelong work with young people.