All my life I’ve been looking at my mom’s tattoo from Auschwitz
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Jana Živná, née Juppová, was born in Louny on 18 June 1946 as one of the first children born in Czechoslovakia to women having returned from an extermination camp. Her mother Gertruda Juppová, née Brillová, was arrested in 1941 further to denunciation by members of the Vlajka organisation who claimed she did not comply with anti-Jewish laws in 1941. In Auschwitz, Gertruda Juppová worked in an office as an accountant, speaking excellent German - which has helped her to survive. She also survived a death march at the end of the war and was liberated near Dresden, Germany. Jana Živná’s father Ladislav Juppa was not of Jewish origin and was waiting for Gertruda’s return in Louny where he owned a tailor salon. In Auschwitz, Gertrude Juppová met a German female prisoner who had been released from Auschwitz, and they remained close friends throughout their lives. She returned from the extermination camp in poor health. Shortly after Jana was born, she became pregnant again and gave birth to son Ladislav. Jana Živná spent her childhood and youth in Louny, graduated from medical school and went to work at the Louny hospital. A large part of her family was murdered by the Nazis in the extermination camps, and the surviving uncles emigrated abroad. The witness and her mother witnessed the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in 1968 with great concerns, as Gertruda Juppová feared arrests and persecution during the occupation. Jana Živná later moved to Prague to join her husband, but in the 1980s she returned to Louny to help her seriously ill mother, who was left alone after the sudden death of her husband. Gertruda Juppová died in 1983. Jana Živná remained in Louny with her husband and son. In 1989 she welcomed the Velvet Revolution and participated in the anti-regime protests in Louny, where she also lived in 2023 when she was filmed for Memory of Nation.
