"The word just got out - the women of Lidice are coming. I ran to Kladno. They brought them there, they brought them in this truck and they took them down, and it was so sad. Since there had been a lot of Germans in Kladno because of the steelworks, there were a lot of German officials working there, they went away and the Lidice women were placed in their apartments for the time being, until they built the new Lidice."
"We heard that they shot the people there [in Lidice], we learned about that. As they set fire to the houses, you could see that. We were on the edge of the forest and saw the smoke as they set it on fire. And then the German young people were demolishing the church, and those were horrible detonations; we heard that."
"I have a very fond memory of President Masaryk. President Masaryk used to go to Lány via Velká Dobrá. My uncle was a blacksmith there and President Masaryk was also a trained blacksmith. And so my uncle always said: 'The gendarmes are on standby - Mr President will go by.' The President went by, waved to the blacksmith, the blacksmith waved to him. And as a child, my uncle always took me with him to see the President."
Jaroslava Koubková was born Jaroslava Haismanová in Kročehlavy near Kladno on 20 October 1922. Her father Antonín Haisman worked as an engine driver with the railway that delivered iron ore to the Kladno ironworks. Her mother Vilemína, née Tučková, died in 1937 and Jaroslava had to take care of the household from then on. She graduated from a business school in Prague and started working as a clerk in the Kladno ironworks during the war. In 1945, she married Ladislav Koubek, a Sparta Prague footballer who had come to Kročehlavy as a refugee from the occupied Sudetenland. They had two children, Jaroslava (1947) and Ladislav (1953). In 1950 they moved to Prague, and when her husband’s football career ended they moved to Mladá Boleslav for his job. Jaroslava Koubková began working as a saleswoman for travel agency Čedok tours abroad and stayed there until retirement in 1988. Then she took care for her husband who became ill with Alzheimer’s disease. Ladislav Koubek died in 1992. As of 2024, Jaroslava Koubková has been living in Mladá Boleslav, is still active and interested in public affairs.
