Libuše Jehličková

* 1940

  • „But right after my birth it was all so sad. I had christenings at St. Wenceslas church in Vrsovice and the day after my christenings, on 26 May, 1940, the gestapo came to arrest my dad. He mentioned in the printing office that he had a gun at home against the Germans. A young disciple said that about him, so the Germans [gestapo] came and searched the whole apartment inside out. It took them all day before they found it [the pistol]. Dad kept it hidden in the toilet water tank. My dad was locked up in Waldheim, Germany. When he returned, he was so excited to see us again that as he was going up the elevator and forgot his suitcase with all his stuff, and it got stolen from him before he managed to get down the elevator again.“

  • „And down in the square at St. Wenceslas Polish skinny prisoners were brought, who sent down strands asking for some food or clothing. And daddy packed them a bit of food and his last pyjamas that his mother was telling him off, and he said to her: "Libuše, be quiet, I may not even need it." And he did not, because they killed him the next day up on the radio buildin, where he was coming from a side street over the roofs. Being a dead man, he had a pink color on his sleeve, which the roof was painted against fire, in order not to burn. There, at the time of death, his watch had stopped, as the doctor had said. It was supposed to be at half past four in the morning, when they shot him through the yard with a bullet right into his heart.“

  • “And what really moved me when I saw his tomb [Jan Palach´s], where we went to place the candles. They dug the mother´s son out of the grave. What kind of communistic hyenism was it...? Dig the dead body out of the grave that bothered us, because we went to burn candles. Not even the fascists did anything like that. He had a tomb at the Olšany cemetery. Today the grave is only a symbolical one. A metal statue lying on the grave, because the body is not in there. They picked him up and burnt him without asking his mother. I cannot understand it. I read something similar in a book about Toufar. They let his niece going from prison to prison for three years, even though she had no money looking for her uncle. They did not even write her a letter to tell her that her uncle had been dead for three years.”

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    Trhový Štěpánov, 05.05.2018

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    duration: 01:12:47
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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I have faith in god and justice

Libuše - mladá.jpg (historic)
Libuše Jehličková
photo: Jan Holík

Libuše Jehličková, née Všetečková, was born on 2 May, 1940 in Prague. On 5 May, 1945 her father, Emanuel Všetečka, died during the fights at Prague Uprising nearby the Czech Radio. After graduating from the elementary school in Vršovice and studied the school of economic in Žižkov in Prague - Vinohrady. In 1958 she graduated, but the communists did not allow her to start working in Centrotex. The reason was her uncle, Přemysl Zoubek, who lived and ran his own business in the Western Germany. She gradually worked in the companies ZPA and Tuzex. Before 1989 she managed finances to repair the church of St. Bartolomy in Trhový Štěpánov, for which she was blamed at work and in 1988 she was kicked out. After 1990 she devoted herself to enterprising activities in Trhový Štěpánov, where she co-founded the company Deltagaz. Since 1995 she retired, until 2015 lived in Prague and currently in Trhový Štěpánov. She has two children, Tomáš and Kateřina.