There was a lot of fear and tears
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Jaromír Martinec was born on 18 August 1939 in Doubravice (today part of Moravičany) u Mohelnice as the second of four children to his parents Jaromír and Anna. The family owned a mill and a farm in their town. His father got involved in the resistance during the Second World War. He smuggled and stored weapons, assisted the families of imprisoned resistance fighters as well as men trying to get across the border to join international armies, in addition to printing and distributing anti-Nazi literature. In May 1944 his father was arrested by the Gestapo. Then he spent a year in the Small Fortress of Terezín, in Breslau (today’s Wrocław) and in Dresden. In Terezín a guard broke his nose and pelvis and in Dresden he barely survived an Allied bomb raid. Upon returning home, he weighed a mere forty kilos and would deal with the health consequences for the remainder of his life. During the communist regime, his family was forced to join the United Agricultural Cooperative and in 1953 the family mill in Doubravice was nationalized. Jaromír Martinec Jr. studied at a miller’s trade school in Pardubice, but as the son of a former entrepreneur he was not accepted into university. Thereafter his entire working life revolved around the milling trade. In 1969 he married Blanka Šímová, with whom he had three children – Jana, Jaromír, and Petr. In 2020 he was living in Moravičany.
