Irma Trksáková

* 1917

  • "We were all naked--the children as well as the old women. That alone wouldn't still be that bad but the rank-and-file soldiers in SS uniforms were walking among us with rifles before they turned on the showers and they were deriding us. We didn't know where to put our hands, which parts of our bodies we should cover and they were laughing at us. They even touched some of the younger ones. This was so humiliating. You know, today it's much more common to appear naked in front of other people but back then, it wasn't usual at all. We weren't raised that way. Nudity was much more intimate than it is today. So it was really humiliating to have young men stare at you and laugh. They weren't laughing at the young and pretty ones, they mocked the old grandmas whose belly or breast were loose. They laughed at their appearance. For me, this was even worse than if they had beaten us."

  • "It's impossible to describe it, they gave them poison to swallow, they injected it into their hearts, they let them starve and freeze. They battered them, beat them up – they simply killed them. They had lived just too long in their eyes - these old and sick women."

  • "After the war was over, they knew who it was and many of our comrades applied to serve in the ranks of the secret police. Honza Maršálek was one of them. He's quite a prominent figure but he didn't work with us. He left to Czechoslovakia. I have no idea what he did there. So Maršálek was also with the secret police and they found out that our traitor was taken over by the English. And they demanded that Peter Lunge as a high functionary at the police arranges for his extradition. And the English wouldn't hand him over and used him for the same purpose as before, he stayed in their CIA or how it's called. They didn't extradite him."

  • "I biked home and when I stood in front of our house, I saw a car parked there. That was rather exceptional since back than almost no one had a car. Still, not a single thought crossed my mind. If I had known it, I would have gone into hiding for some time. So when I walked inside I found two Gestapo men were already waiting for me. My father was passionate about mushrooms; he would often go into the forest for them. It was mushroom season and we had mushrooms for dinner. The Gestapo men said I could have a meal before they'd take me away. I didn't really feel like eating since my belly was tight but I loaded myself with mushrooms as I pretended to be absolutely calm and carefree. I didn't want to show them my anxiety."

  • "The theme of our leaflets was 'Why did you get a job? Because he's arming for war'. That was still before the war! He wants to subdue all nations and wipe out all the opponents. We would print in German not in Czech! It sounds easy but we later had our contacts in the factories and the workers were distributing the leaflets for us in the factories and so on."

  • Full recordings
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    Vídeň, 01.05.2009

    (audio)
    duration: 03:28:00
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

“I’ll do everything to make sure that people aren’t persecuted for their origin or beliefs.”

Portrait of Irma Trsak made during the recording
Portrait of Irma Trsak made during the recording
photo: V. Janík

  Irma Trksáková was born on October 2, 1917, in Vienna. Her parents were Slovak and they moved to Vienna because of work. After her graduation in 1936, she attended a pedagogical school in Prague and afterwards taught at a Czech school in Vienna. She joined the resistance movement even before the outbreak of WWII. Irma Trksáková became a spy and simultaneously cooperated with a group of left-wing Viennese Czechoslovaks who printed anti-war and anti-Hitler leaflets and conducted sabotage. In 1941, the group was betrayed and Irma Trksáková was arrested by the Gestapo. After one year of being investigated in solitary confinement, she was deported to the concentration camp in Ravensbrück. After the war she settled in Karlovy Vary and worked as a teacher. Later she found a job as a secretary of the cultural attaché at the Czechoslovak embassy in Vienna (the embassy was directed by František Bořek-Dohalský at the time). She worked there until 1950. The parents of Irma Trksáková moved to their second daughter who lived in Ostrava but Irma remained in Vienna. In 1951, she gave birth to a son, but due to an unhappy relationship she had to raise her son himself and remained unmarried for the rest of her life. The longest period she worked for an employer was her engagement at Siemens, where she purchased medical equipment. In 1977, she retired and fully devoted herself to public-awareness-raising activities in order to pass her life experience to the younger generations. She used to be a member of the Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ), but left it because she disagreed with specific actions of the party.