My father turned himself in to the Gestapo instead of my older brother
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Miroslav Jurníček was born on 25 March 1929 to his parents Jan and Marie in Hačky in the Konice region. He grew up with his five siblings on a farm where he had to work from a young age. In mid-March 1939, he witnessed the arrival of the German occupation troops. In nearby Konice, he attended a municipal school and saw the local Jews wearing the obligatory JUDE badge on their clothing. In 1943, a fake Western paratrooper connected to the real local resistance - Josef Fiala - came to their village. After his arrest by the Gestapo, a wave of persecution began; the father of the witness turned himself in to the Gestapo instead of his son Jan and was imprisoned. Several other residents of Hačky ended up in Nazi prisons and one was executed. Miroslav’s cousin Alois Jedlička from Svojanov near Bouzov was imprisoned and later executed in connection with the activities of J. Fiala. After the war, he worked as a forestry trainee and in 1949 he graduated from a two-year school for forest rangers in Bruntál. In 1949-1951 he served as a soldier in Prague. In 1951 he married Zdenka Slaninová, with whom he had two children. He worked all his life in forestry in Brandýs nad Labem. At the time of the interview (2025) he lived in a senior citizens’ home in Central Bohemia.
