We are all equal and we all are worth something in this world
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Jarmila Drachová was born on 31 August 1934 in Prague and had a sister and a brother. The family lived in Nusle, Prague. She graduated from the Ladislav Hanus elementary school (now the Křesomyslova elementary school), and during the war the Germans had weapons stored there. She remembers the bombing of Prague at the beginning of 1945, the children tortured by the Hitler Youth in the laundry at Pankrác and the liberation of Prague. Jarmila Drachová sang, played theatre - as a child she even played children’s roles at Fidlovačka. In September 1949 she went to Jaroměř to the Silka company school, but after a year she returned home with jaundice and did not finish school. She then found employment as a secretary at the ESA cooperative, where her father worked as a worker, and where she remained until 1955, when she married. Three children were born to her. She lost the eldest tragically when he was six and a half years old. In 1965, the witness’s brother emigrated to West Germany after paying for a trip to Hungary and stayed in Vienna. In 1969, Jarmila Drachová was allowed by the Communists to go to Italy to visit her aunt who had gone there in 1929. She was not allowed to take her children with her. In the Vatican she attended the funeral of Cardinal Beran. In November 1989, she and her husband went to Wenceslas Square to demonstrate and both cheered for Václav Havel to become president. In 2019, Jarmila Drachová was living in a home for the elderly in Prague’s Chodov district.
