Irena Valášková

* 1923

  • “With my friend, Holoušová, we were delivering weapons and food for the partisans. When one of them got slightly healthier, he had to join the partisans in the forest. They blew up the train in Bludov, they went to Rohle. They had so many bunkers; on the way to Brníčko on the left side there were so many bunkers.”

  • “Once we were in Postřelmov. I don’t know what were those people called. They gave us a rifle. But how to carry it? The two of us went together. We put the rifle in our pants; back then we wore the kind of loose sports trousers. On our way we met the policemen and they asked us, what we were doing there at night. We said it was only getting dark and our bike had a puncture. As we saw them, we let the air out of the bike and went on foot. But how do you want to walk with a rifle in your trousers? So then we laid it across the bike.”

  • "They suffered from periostitis and one shot off his fingers. My mother said that they were poor things, so we took them in. They took shelter in the henhouse, where they were in the daytime, and spent the nights on the hay worse. If anything, they would have fled. Across the road was a school and the Germans were staying in there. Now, where should we put the dirt from the bunker? We put it under the trees and into the manure and the people asked, how come we had so much manure. We said that we have a goat. They poked into it and knew that there is clay. So we answered that we planted trees. So it finally all turned out well.”

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    Olomouc, 14.09.2016

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Hiding partisans in Sudetenland

Irena Valášková (Boxanová)
Irena Valášková (Boxanová)
photo: archiv dcery Ireny Hildebrandové

Irena Valášková, née Boxanová, was born on 2 May, 1923 in Dlouhomilov in Šumpersko region. In 1932 the family moved due to economic crisis to work in a village of Doubrava in Těšínsko. When the Gerans began to occupy the Sudetenland after the Munich Agreeent in 1938, the Pols took over the Cieszyn region and Doubrava too. The family had to move out within 24 hours. They returned to Dlouhomilov, where they were hiding a group of partisans since 1944 led by Jiří Kožoušek. Back then the witness was twenty-one and functioned as a connection handing over the messages between them and individual partisan and resistance groups, but also took care of partisan supply and food, medicine and gun provisions. After war she moved to Javorník, where she first worked in a pasture squad, later as an officer in the national committee and then in a bakery until retirement. She still lives in Javorník in 2016.