“I remember that during the mobilization – it was in September – we were picking plums; there were lots of plums in the village and under the plum trees we had baskets which were used for potatoes and we were picking plums. As the soldiers – the guys who were already drafted, our fathers – were already passing by – my father was among them – and as their cars were passing by we were showering them with the plums so that they would have some treat to take with them.”
“I remember that the first who came were two Poles. They had run away because Poland had already been in a turmoil; that was in 1938-1939 and they stayed only for two days until the morning. They stayed for two days and they got better, they rested and it was a great benefit that the mill was there, because we could have food without any limitations. But if the Germans had found out, our lives would have been at stake.”
“Three Russians then came there. Three Russians who had escaped from a POW camp. Their names were Ivan, Vasil, and Nikolaj. I still remember it. For safety reasons, in order so that they would not have to be in the house, they built a dugout cottage outside as was their custom in Russia. They made a dugout cottage in the forest and they lived there and they were coming to our house only for meals. Sometimes I would carry the food for them there by myself, we cooked or baked something and they were somewhere in the middle of nowhere.”
“We were terribly scared! I can tell you that we were so scared that when the war ended I felt as if somebody had stolen my brain. I was really going crazy because of all that, I had a nervous and psychic breakdown. We feared so much!”
Jarmila Hrbková, née Chomoutová, was born December 26, 1927 in Brno to Marie and Richard Chomout. The family lived in their own mill in Šmelcovna near Bílý potok in the vicinity of Brno and Jarmila’s father worked as the administrator of the mill. The family had enough food thanks to the mill and the place was well secluded in the forest and difficult to access. During the war they were helping tens of partisans, escaped prisoners of war and people from Brno and the surroundings who were in need of help. They were providing them with shelter and food while risking that they themselves would be discovered and arrested by the Gestapo. The mill was confiscated from the family by the communists following the coup d’état in February 1948. Jarmila completed a secondary school of economics after the war and then she worked in a bank. In 2013 she was awarded the Cross of Merit 3rd Class, but as she herself said, this distinction goes primarily to her brave parents.
