During the bombing of Ostrava, our windows were constantly shaking
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Jolana Mezerová, née Sýkorová, was born on November 22, 1934 in Stará Bystrica, Slovakia, as the eldest of ten children. At the beginning of the war, the family moved from Slovakia to Bohemia, to Ostravice. The father worked as a miner, the mother took care of the household and helped in the farm. War rations barely supported the family, Jolana also had to help. It recalls the bombing of Ostrava in August 1944 and its liberation by the Red Army. After the war, she started visiting a town school in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí, but shortly after that the family moved to Rudíkovy near Albrechtice to a house after evicted Germans. The town house was completed by Jolana in Albrechtice. After finishing school, she wanted to become a telephone operator, but there was no place left for her. She worked in the office of the power plant in Albrechtice and later in Mydlovary. In 1955, she got married and moved to Příbram with her husband. Three children were born to them, but the eldest Jaruška died at the age of five. In Příbram, Jolana Mezerová first worked as a cleaner in mining hostels and later directly in the uranium mines, where her husband also worked. At shaft 16, she was in charge of methane measuring devices, later she worked in the lamp factory. She briefly stopped at Bytíz and retired from shaft 21. She lived through the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in Příbram, but she was not interested in politics. In 2022, she lived in Příbram.
