Jaromíra Buřtová

* 1941

  • "That's what divided Jiřetín - into demolitionists and demolition opponents. We used to come here with petitions. When somebody told me they wouldn't sign because they were working in the shaft, that they would be fired, I understood. But I didn't understand the ones who were just after the money! They didn't care about anything else, they just cared about the money! And it's just, I still have such a bad relationship with those people." - "Is there any way to quantify how many people there were? Was it a third or a quarter who had the mindset like that in Jiřetín?" - "Well, I'd say a quarter, maybe more."

  • "Now we were going home. The worst view was in Jihlava. There was no highway then, but this hill above Jihlava, there were these tanks pointed at Jihlava - crazy! Then in Mělník we got mixed up. Those guys from Russia, young guys, you could see they were hungry and thirsty, nobody gave them anything. I had a co-worker here, he lived in Brandov - I only found that out later. He wanted to bring a pram from Germany, that's what they used to go there for. He told me that they had agreed that at night the Germans - they were probably relatives - would bring the pram to Brandov to the stream. But the tanks were coming, and he told me that they were under the bridge with the pram, and the tanks were driving over them. I didn't find that out until twenty years later from that co-worker. And right here in Jiřetín, a tank smashed up part of a house. I think its brakes failed, or what do I know, it hit a corner of the Maule house."

  • "There was a Parkhotel on that lake. All the children's performances, balls, culture [took place] in the Parkhotel. And it had a hall inside, a restaurant. And outside there was a dance floor and a kind of gazebo where they hid the furniture in the winter. That was beautiful! We even went from Albrechtice to Jezeří to practice."

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    Horní Jiřetín, 01.11.2025

    (audio)
    duration: 01:04:35
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - Ústecký kraj
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I believed the Russians were brothers, so 1968 was a shock

Wedding photo with Miroslav Buřt, 1960
Wedding photo with Miroslav Buřt, 1960
photo: witness´s archive

Jaromíra Buřtová, née Rydvanová, was born on 12 October 1941 in Bystrc near Brno. In 1946, together with her mother Božena, father Rudolf and sister Věra, they moved to Albrechtice in the Most region, where her paternal grandmother lived. She spent her childhood in the village, which disappeared 30 years later due to coal mining. In 1960, she was appointed to start working at Stalin’s chemical plant in Litvínov Záluží. She enjoyed working in the construction department until 1968. The August invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops was a shock for her. She again expressed her disillusionment at work during the 1969 examinations, for which the Communists took revenge. She was not allowed to receive bonuses and constantly underwent evaluation by her superiors. From 1972 she lived with her husband Miroslav Buřt in Horní Jiřetín. In 1976, she left for the Mining Construction Company. In 2025 she was still living with her husband in Horní Jiřetín.