If he did not recognise me, he might escape
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Jaroslava Smetanová was born on 7 October 1935 in Sudice near Boskovice. The first five years of her life she spent most of her time with her grandparents, only after the birth of her sister Vera did she return home. During the Protectorate, her parents, as peasants, had to hand over the obligatory supplies. During the liberation in 1945, Soviet soldiers lived in her grandparents’ house. After graduating from the municipal school, she started working at the Minerva Boskovice company at the age of 15, where she met her future husband Josef Smetana. He was 17 years older, during the war he was totally deployed in Germany and survived the bombing of the Kuřim engineering plant. After 1948 he planned to escape across the border. Eventually he got married and the last small attempt to cross the border illegally was made by the couple on a joint holiday in Slovakia. He was investigated by the StB (State Security Service) for his views, which he presented publicly, and he signed a cooperation agreement, but refused to be a “tipster”. He was eventually sentenced to 13 months’ imprisonment for the crime of endangering official secrets in 1954. After an amnesty from President Antonín Zápotocký, he was released after a month of imprisonment in Brno at Cejl. Two daughters, Libuše and Danuše, were born to Mr. and Mrs. Smetana. Josef worked all his life in Minerva as an indispensable designer of sewing machines, Jaroslava later worked in ČSAD (Czechoslovak State Bus Transport), where she also survived the occupation in 1968. Unfortunately, Josef Smetana did not live to see the Velvet Revolution, he died in September 1989. Both husband and wife and their children attended Unity Brethren Church services in the congregation in nearby Letovice all their lives. In 2022, Jaroslava lived with her daughter’s family in Boskovice.
