“They found me crying under the small window. When the Germans left, people from Prlov who saw that it had burnt down started to gather there and they found me crying. My granny was there as well, however... She saw the horror and she... she... It must have been absolutely horrible. So they could not do anything else but the Žáks family took me to Valašská Polanka and they raised me.”
“They led them through the village and they forced them inside the houses where the partisans lived. And they set the houses on fire. They set on fire also our house where I was born to my parents. I was ten months old and I was their first child. It must have been terrible when they came to the house. I also got to know as granny told me that when they came to the house and my granny was holding me in her arms, my mum allegedly told her what she would do with me and what she was supposed to do. I do not know how it happened. To make it short, she allegedly threw me from a small window that was in an attic bedroom. There were small windows in those wood houses. So she allegedly threw me from the window.”
“Dad and other citizens from Prlov were reluctant. He wanted to be with my mum, he wanted to say goodbye to her because they had told them during interrogation that they had helped partisans and that they would be sentenced to death. They were supposed to load my father to a German car and to take him to the castle in Vizovize but they did not get there. They hanged them as a deterrent on apple trees between Pozděchov and Břatřejov. And they told other citizens who were in the pub that they would be punished as well and they led them to their houses. And they burned the houses down.”
Jarmila Ondrášková was born on 8 June 1944 in Prlov in Moravian Wallachia to the family of Antonín and Anna Ondrášek. Both her parents joined the anti-Nazi resistance at the end of the war. When special Nazi taskforce Joseph encircled Prlov on 23 April 1945, twenty-three death sentences were passed after cruel interrogations. Antonín Ondrášek and other two partisans were tortured and hanged near to nearby Bratřejov; his wife Anna Ondrášková and other members of family were burnt to death in a burning house. Ten-month-old Jarmila survived the Nazi rage probably thanks to the fact that her mother managed to throw her out from the window of a closet. The citizens of Prlov who survived found crying Jarmila after the taskforce Joseph left the place. Jarmila Ondrášková then grew up in Valašská Polanka in a family where her mum had grown up. She studied at Secondary Agriculture Technical School in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. She worked in a secret military storehouse in Vyšní Lhota in the area of Ostrava from 1969 to 1975. She also joined the then Union of Anti-Fascist Fighters, she was a member of a successor organization the Czech Freedom Fighters’ Union during the time of shooting in 2020, she was a chairwoman of the Czech Freedom Fighters’ Union in Frýdek-Místek from 2005 to 2020. Jarmila Ondrášková died on August 15, 2022.
from the top left: niece Ola, uncle Jura, uncle Jan, uncle Míra
on the top right: uncle Joža
one row below from the left: Jarmila Ondrášková, drandfather Žák, aunt Marta, aunt Marta´s husband Břetislav, uncle Břetislav´s mother
at the bottom: cousins Jenda, Jiří, Mirek, Zdenek
from the top left: niece Ola, uncle Jura, uncle Jan, uncle Míra
on the top right: uncle Joža
one row below from the left: Jarmila Ondrášková, drandfather Žák, aunt Marta, aunt Marta´s husband Břetislav, uncle Břetislav´s mother
at the bottom: cousins Jenda, Jiří, Mirek, Zdenek
Festive meeting on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of the independent Czechoslovakia and the 74th anniversary of the establishment of the Jan Žižka partisan brigade, Vsetín, 15 September 2018
Festive meeting on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the proclamation of the independent Czechoslovakia and the 74th anniversary of the establishment of the Jan Žižka partisan brigade, Vsetín, 15 September 2018
