Jiřina Perglová

* 1941

  • „I was one year old in February, and at Easter, which was sometime in March, men in civilian clothes came for my father. They took him away and took his watch and keys and left. He was taken to Petschek Palace for questioning. That was in March. Then he was locked up in Pankrác Prison, my mother visited him one last time on June 11. She took me with her holding me in her arms. Where else would she put me, she had no one to look after me. My father said that the situation was very serious and that he did not know if he would return home at all. He was executed on June 30 in Kobylisy.“

  • „My father was executed at the age of forty-two, when I was a year and a quarter old. I don't remember that time at all. But when I was four years old, we went back from visiting my mother's sister, who lived in Letná. We lived in K Červeném vrchu street in Prague Vokovice and my mother saw a giant German car in front of our house. It had been two years since the execution. She held my hand terribly tight, I remember that, and she said we couldn't go home. In short, the Germans were there and took all my father’s remaining things. Since they had his apartment keys and everything that suited them - a typewriter, shoes, clothes, they took it away and my mom was afraid to go home at the time.“

  • „It was such a sad time. When I asked [my mother], she said she didn't believe it. And my mother was a believer. She said that if there were a God, he would not allow such crimes. Her father was helping people and now she saw that this help turned against him. It was strange. He worked together with Balabán, Mašín and especially with Mr. Morávek. There he issued these civic identity cards and he was a member of the resistance, the Defense of the Nation. My mother did not want to talk about it so I wouldn't bother. She said it was one of the worst times for her. Since her mother died at the age of sixteen, and her husband was executed at the age of twenty-two. So she was completely alone.“

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    Praha , 24.05.2021

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My first childhood memory? How my mother was afraid to go home because of the Gestapo

Jiřina Perglová, 1946
Jiřina Perglová, 1946
photo: Witness

Jiřina Perglová, born Kosíková, was born on February 14, 1941 in Prague as the only child of František and Jiřina Kosíková, who came from Kladno. They left for Prague before the war. František Kosík studied mechanical engineering, but in 1936 he joined the police in Prague 6 due to a lack of job opportunities. In 1939 he joined the resistance activities of the Defense of the Nation (Obrana národa, ON for short), where he worked together with Mašín, Morávek and Balabán. Thanks to his position in the police department, he provided the resistance fighters with false documents and also provided them with food stamps. In the years 1941-1942, Václav Morávek stayed at the Kosík house, and he later shot himself in March 1942 while surrounded by the Gestapo. The Gestapo found two pairs of keys to two apartments and set out in search of their owners. One of the keys belonged to the Kosík family. Based on these charges František Kosík was arrested by the Gestapo and on July 31, 1942, he was shot at the Kobylisy Shooting Range. Jiřina was then a year and five months old, and her widowed mother was 22 years old. In the years 1947-1950, Jiřina went to primary school in Prague Dejvice, then she lived in Kladno with her grandparents Anna and Václav Kosík until 1954, so the communists, among other things, wouldn’t put a foreign tenant in their apartment due to so-called “excess meters”. Jiřina graduated from the Prague Graphic School in Hellichova street in 1961 and in the same year she married the printer Jan Pergl, who did external teaching at the school. They raised two children together. Jiřina Perglová worked for 33 years at the State Pedagogical Publishing House as a technical editor. After the Velvet Revolution, she was a technical editor at the Septima Publishing House. She worked until she was 70 years old. The Kosík family was so traumatized by the execution of František that they were no longer interested in politics and lived for the family. Jiřina Kosíková, the widow of František Kosík, never married again. She died in 2003.