Jana Heinzlová

* 1951

  • "I deliberately bought the book Jizerka - Smědava by Mr. Roman Karpaš and there I read about my grandfather, what a monstrous person he was, how he took pictures of dead people, and that is fundamentally not true. My grandfather had a serious, one might say fatal injury from the First World War and those soldier friends did not leave him alone, they took him from the battlefield and my grandfather had pictures of the bullet hole in his skull. And I know from my grandmother and my mother that when the looting guards came to Jizerka, when they discovered these pictures, they started: 'A murder happened here!' No murder, it could have been a murder but in a fight. But my grandfather did not photograph anyone with such injuries. Those were his own injuries."

  • "You know, I was lucky. When I lived in Krásná Lípa, we went to Varnsdorf. There, I only had Jana, my daughter, and at that time children's shoes and shoes in general were in short supply, they had salamander shoes, that was something. It wasn't here, even Baťa shoes were not here. So, we did shopping in Germany, we went to Löbau, and then we went across the border. And one time my colleague and I were stopped and I was carrying a pair of ankle boots for my daughter, they had these strange low ankle boots and they had a fastening around the ankle, they looked elegant against our heavy-footed lace-up ones. And then another thing, it was salami, their fragrant one, I liked it at the time, and then one more thing... Well, just three things that were not allowed. And the customs officer says to me: 'What do you have? What are you transporting?' So, I told him in German. 'And you know it's not allowed to be transported?' So, I said: 'One thing is a gift, the rompers, we don't have these slippers, I like them and my daughter wears them well, and I like the salami.' He looked at me and said: 'Well, if you can speak German so well, then go.' That was my experience with customs, but otherwise they were unpleasant."

  • "There were shifts there, so we also went in the evening, and when we were coming back, our peacekeepers almost killed me. Because we, as girls, fundamentally refused to ride with them, and so did the boys, no one wanted to ride with them. But we were walking along the edge, I was walking with a group of fellow students, and they were just trying to knock me down on that straight road, so the boys literally dragged me into the ditch, and that's how they saved my life."

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    Liberec, 09.05.2022

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My German grandfather was in the NSDAP (the National Socialist German Workers’ Party), but he wasn’t a monster

Jana Heinzlová in the graduation photo in 1971
Jana Heinzlová in the graduation photo in 1971
photo: archive of the witness

She was born on October 30, 1951 in Hejnice as the only daughter of a Czech father, Josef Bureš, and a German mother Hildegarda, née Maturová. Due to her mother’s illness, she was raised by her German grandmother Augustina, who had to move to the territory of the future GDR in July 1945 and then she returned to Czech in 1953 after her husband’s death. After finishing elementary school in Hejnice, she continued her studies at the Secondary Agricultural Technical School in Frýdlant in Czech, which she graduated in 1971. She then joined the state farm in Krásná Lípa, from where she moved back to her native Hejnice after five years. In 1978, she married Jan Heinzl and together they raised three children. In Hejnice, she first worked in an electro porcelain factory and later as a librarian in Hejnice. She was writing the chronicle of the city Hejnice from 1985 to 1995. In 2022, she lived in Hejnice.