To experience war is the worst thing that can happen to a person
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Jaroslava Melšová, née Missbachová, was born on 30 May 1937 in the South Moravian village of Alexovice. During the Second World War, her father, Karel Missbach, was forced to labour in Most. Her mother, Marie Missbach, was left alone to care for her two daughters. She was worried about them because of possible air raids, so from 1944, they hid in the shelters near the village. By the end of the war, the whole family lived together. In May 1945, they had to accommodate four Soviet officers. After the liberation, a group of captured, impoverished Germans passed through Alexovice. Jaroslava Melšová and her mother brought them water to drink. Since her father was a communist, she did not perceive the February 1948 coup negatively. At the beginning of the 1950s, she studied at a higher vocational chemistry school in Brno. After graduation, she joined the Fotochema company and later worked at the Komárov foundry in Brno. In January 1960, she married Josef Melša. In March of that year, they moved to Ostrava. They both worked at the Klement Gottwald New Steelworks. She experienced the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops while staying at a cottage in the Jeseníky Mountains. During normalisation she worked at the Energy Institute of the State Energy Inspectorate. In 2021 she lived in Ostrava-Poruba.
