Jarmila Pospíšilová

* 1936  †︎ 2022

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The farm was taken away from them first by the Nazis and then by the Communists

Young Jarmila Pospíšilová (Valouchová)
Young Jarmila Pospíšilová (Valouchová)
photo: archiv pamětnice

Jarmila Pospíšilová was born on January 12, 1936 in Olšany in the Šumperk region as the eldest of three children to the parents Jan and Jarmila Valouch. The family owned a farm in the center of the village, which included 10 hectares of fields and 10 hectares of forest. In the autumn of 1943, the German authorities confiscated their farms and assigned German resettlers from somewhere in Romania. The parents then took them to a labor camp near Fürstenstein Castle (Ksiąz in Polish) within sight of Waldenburg (Wałbrzych in Polish). Their father’s uncle, Fr. Jindřich Valouch, was responsible for their release. He collected the amount he used to pay for their release from the believers. In February 1944, the parents returned to visit their children. Until the end of the Second World War, they lived in the mountains in solitude Na Žampachu (Hostice). There were guerrillas in the local forests, which the family supplied with food. After the war, they returned to the farm in Olšany. Later, during collectivization, they steadfastly refused to join the unified agricultural cooperative (collective farm). Jarmila was expelled from flax school a year before graduating. In 1954, the parents locked them up in the National Committee building for a few hours and did not release them until after joining the cooperative, which they allegedly did as the last in the village. In February 1959, Jarmila married Jiří Pospíšil. In 1968, she and her husband and their four children moved to Ruda nad Moravou, where they lived in 2020. Jarmila Pospíšilová died in August 2022.