Olga Jaroňová

* 1930

  • "My husband and I were both in the party. My husband was in the Party since 1945. He came from a working-class family. Both parents worked in a quarry, so they had bad experiences from the depression time and the First Republic in general. Both Dad and both brothers joined the Party in 1945. It was out of pure conviction. And then, when I was nineteen and twenty, I joined the party too. We both worked and naively believed in communist ideas. It was only in 1968 that our eyes were opened. At that time I was chairwomen of the school organization and we publicly spoke out against the entry of the troops. We issued some kind of resolution, so then we were both expelled from the party. When I was expelled, I had to leave the education field as well. I wasn't allowed to teach. So I went to work in a foundry and operated a crane in the foundry for a year before I could go back to school. And even when I went back to school, I wasn't allowed to teach a ninth grade class. It was all right with the teachers, only the district had some comments about me. And when they heard that I had been elected as en economist to the factory trade unions committee, they immediately intervened and I was not allowed to hold any position. And they made surprise inspections of me. An inspector came and told me what to teach that class. They just made it uncomfortable for me."

  • "I remember the last day of the war. It was raining, it was cold, it was ugly. It was the last day of April. We had to blackout all through the war, we weren't allowed to have light anywhere. And someone was banging on our door. And when Daddy opened the door, a German soldier came in saying he needed to bandage his leg. I can still see him wrapping his leg. He had a wound, so he was bandaging it. He showed us a picture of his family, his wife and children, and he started crying and complaining. That's how I keep seeing him. And when he bandaged his leg, he left. And on the morning of the first of May, the sun was shining. Azure sky. And the Red Army soldiers had arrived. I see the first one riding his bicycle and shouting: 'Where's the fascist? Where's the fascist?' And the rest of the army behind him. And so they stayed with us. I know they killed a cow there, cut it up, and then they cooked a huge pot of soup in our kitchen. They stayed with us for about a week before they moved on with the front."

  • "When 1938 came, I know that the order came to leave Slovakia within twenty-four hours. And we were in the boarding school. It was in September. We hadn't been there a month when my mother came to get us. She took us to Daskabáty, to my father's birthplace, to my father's brother. There was a small house of their parents who had passed away. We moved into that house. Daddy stayed there for about a month to pack up and move everything. And I remember those holidays. Daddy was very progressive. He had a big library and he was one of the few people who had a radio, even though there was no electricity. He had an accumulator by the radio, and batteries, and I don't know what all to make it play. We had an awful lot of people coming to listen to it in 1938. They listened even bellow the windows. So the news from the radio spread around the neighbourhood and in the barracks."

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    Ostrava, 06.04.2022

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After the war, I blindly trusted the communists. It wasn’t until 1968 that I opened my eyes

Olga Jaroňová, 1958
Olga Jaroňová, 1958
photo: Witness´s archive

Olga Jaroňová, née Niesnerová, was born on 14 May 1930 in the village of Dlhoňa in north-eastern Slovakia. Her father, a former member of the Czechoslovak Legion in Russia, served in the financial guard there. Until the age of eight, she lived with her parents and brothers in the barracks of the finance officers in the middle of the forests near the Dukla Pass. After the Munich crisis in 1938, her father was transferred to Moravia. She spent the war years in Drahotuše in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. She married in Hranice, where two daughters were born. She joined the Communist Party. In 1956 she moved with her family to Bohumín. She graduated from a grammar school and a secondary pedagogical school. Then she completed distance studies at the Faculty of Education in Ostrava. She taught at primary school in the centre of Bohumín. In 1968 she supported the revival process called the Prague Spring. After 21 August 1968 she protested against the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops. She did not pass the party’s checks in 1970. She was expelled from the Communist Party and was not allowed to teach. After a year in the foundry of Bohumín Ironworks, she was allowed to return to education. Until her retirement she taught at the primary school in the outskirts of Bohumín Skřečoň. At the time of recording (2022) she was living in Bohumín.