Jaroslava Hynková

* 1935

  • “Our people persecuted the Germans horribly, they tortured them and beat them, there were several people who were shot to death. There was one cruel commissioner. My mom was happy that we were not yet there when it happened. We only arrived in 1946 and nothing more was happening here at that time. But I still remember the funeral of one young girl, whom they had tortured to death in some way. Then there was also another nice-looking German girl, I think her name was Truda. She had long plaits that reached to the middle of her back and she worked as a helper in one Czech family. A cow kicked her and the milk spilled. Mrs. Adamcová, the woman for whom Truda worked, shaved Trudas’s long hair completely, including her long plaits, as a punishment. The mother of the girl then cursed Mrs. Adamcová and told her that she would become a cripple one day. And it really happened and the woman really did become a cripple.”

  • “The collectivization started in 1950 and they had to have cattle at home before the cowhouse was built. So they were feeding the cattle at home, and when they took them to the cowhouse, they let my parents keep one cow as a source of income. Dad started working as a feeder of calves in the cowhouse. When the Unified Agricultural Cooperative arrived, it was the worst experience for my parents, because since they have not yet earned anything and all their property was confiscated for the cooperative, they were the ones who suffered most. After they started working for the cooperative, they had to work unimaginably hard. I was going to school in Králíky and I didn’t even have winter shoes. On the Groundhog Day, in February, the weather was dry at that time, and my mom lent me her shoes. And since my feet were slim, she stuffed the shoes with newspapers for me so that the shoes would fit and I would be able to walk all the way to the school. It began snowing heavily before the evening came and one of the girls from my class therefore invited me to spend the night in their house. I stayed there for about three days and grandpa then borrowed horses and he went to pick me up from there.”

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    Letohrad, 12.04.2018

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    duration: 02:13:17
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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People have all kinds of conveniences now, but what they lack is humanity and mutual understanding

Jaroslava Hynková - 1950
Jaroslava Hynková - 1950
photo: archiv pamětnice

Jaroslava Hynková, née Mlynářová, was born on July 26, 1935 in the village Radim in the Chrudim district. Just like thousands of others, after the end of WWII her family moved in search of a better future from the country’s interior to the border regions, where they settled in a house which had remained empty after the forced deportations of Germans. They found a farm in the village Horní Lipka near Králíky. However, life in the foothills of the Králický Sněžník turned into a nightmare. The village was still being administered by commissioner Vladimír Rozinek at that time, and there were cases of violence during his administration, and even a sevenfold murder of local Germans. After the situation calmed down and the family had already invested considerable effort into setting up their farm, it was confiscated from them during the collectivization of the countryside under the direction of the communist regime. They suffered from poverty for several years, because they were receiving only minimal pay for their hard work in the local Unified Agricultural Cooperative and most of their income was coming only from their croft. When she was fifteen years old, Jaroslava moved to Letohrad and she began working there as a worker in the textile factory Orban (later Perla). She worked in this factory until her retirement. In 1952 she married Václav Hynek and in the same year their daughter Jaroslava was born and in the subsequent four years they had two more daughters - Venuše and Miluše. Jaroslava was living in Letohrad in 2018.