Nina Jahnová

* 1923

Ukraine, New citizen of Sudetenland after 1945, Forced labour during the WW2, Witnesses of local events connected to WWII
8. 5. 1945 - End of WWII
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    The German woman gave them a Trabant for the painting

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    duration: 01:08
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    "And there was another German. We got an apartment, and they were tenements then. And she came in one day and said, 'Lady, I'll give you everything, but that picture you have on the wall, it costs a lot of money. And when it calms down a little bit and I can come, I'll take the painting away.' And when she came, she came with her friend, and you know they gave us - the friend went with her and they took the painting and she left the Trabant for us. For the painting. And she said, 'If you only knew what it was worth!' It didn't mean anything to us."

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    She was hiding a piece of onion for her future husband

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    duration: 00:42
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    "I met in Germany. I was working in the canteen. There it all had to be done by hand, potatoes and all, so that there was as little waste as possible. And he would come in and say to me, 'Are you Russian, are you Russian?' And I would say, 'No, I'm Ukrainian.' So I would give him what I could - like a piece of cabbage, a piece of onion, a piece of bread."

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    Dad hid her from being taken to forced labor in Germany

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    duration: 00:31
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    "The Germans took us to work whether you want to or not! They took the young. My dad hid me. We had this footbridge, and he put me there, in the footbridge, and said he didn't know where I was. And he [the German] says, 'Come on, you. You will go working. So he walked a little bit and I had to climb out. I hope dad... well, so I was in Germany to work."

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    Velká Bystřice, 26.02.2024

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    duration: 54:16
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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For work to Germany, for love to the Czech Republic

Nina Jahnová in 2024
Nina Jahnová in 2024
photo: Memory of Nations
photo: Memory of Nations
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Nina Jahnová, née Sereda, was born in Zaporozhye, Ukraine, on October 11, 1923. Her father, Semyon Sereda, worked as a locksmith in a combine factory. Mum Marfa Sereda was a seamstress. She had two brothers, Vasil, two years older, and Fyodor, three years younger. Both enlisted in the army during World War II. While the younger Fyodor survived the war, the older Vasil was killed in an unknown place. In 1944, Nina was conscripted to forced labour in the North German town of Kiel, where she worked in a factory canteen. There she met Karel Jahn, a Czech who had been totally deployed. After the war, they married and went together to the Czechoslovak Republic. They settled in Hlubočky, a former German village near Olomouc, where they got an apartment after the displaced Germans and a job at the Moravia factory. They had two children together, a daughter Alena and a son Alexander. Nina Jahnová was reunited with her parents after 16 long years in 1960, when she visited them and the whole family in Ukraine. In 2024, Nina Jahnová was living in the St. Anne’s House of Peaceful Old Age in Velká Bystřice.

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