Jaruška Žolčáková

* 1929

Participant in Czechoslovak resistance during WW2
5. – 9. 5. 1945 - Prague Uprising, 1944 - 1945 - The liberation of Czechoslovakia, 1945 - The liberation of the concentration camps
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    Meeting the son of the regiment during the advent of the Red Army

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    “This boy, he could have been fourteen or maybe fifteen years old at the most. He was dressed in a tank-crew member uniform and his legs were riddled with bullets. He was just sitting there and holding his machine gun like this. I and my sister, who was some four years older than me, came to that car where he was because he had no idea where they were taking him. So we came to him, looked at him and told him that he we were girls whereas he was a boy. But he wouldn’t understand anyway. We tried to talk to him in our broken Russian. We spoke German but hardly any Russian as our dad taught us German, not Russian, and it was a clever thing to do. Anyway, in our poor Russian, we tried to explain to him that he was safe, that we were nurses and that there was also a doctor there trying to help him. We told him that we would treat his wounds. But he kept repeating: ‘if you touch me, I’ll shoot you to pieces!’ So we experienced a lot of funny stories like that.”

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    How she came to be called by the name of Jaruška

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    “We’ve never been religious, didn’t go to church or anything like that. So he went to the town hall because he needed them to issue my birth certificate and as we weren’t churchgoers, we went to the town hall. Well and they’d ask my dad: ‘What name is it going to be?’ And he said: ‘Well, Jaruška’. So they put the name Jaruška in my birth certificate. And there it stayed. Thus I’ve been Jaruška for all of my life. I have to say that I do mind a bit. I mean, I’m not putting the blame on my dad but it gets a bit annoying as you get older. When they ask for my name I tell them Jaruška and they’re like ‘OK, and what is it really? Jarmila or Jaroslava?’ So I pull out my ID card and show them. ‘There you go’. And they’re like ‘Oh, alright’, and they put it in the way it’s written on my card.”

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    Helping her parents during the Prague uprising

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    “Then, my parents got involved in the resistance and we, the girls, would help them. Whenever they locked somebody up, we would go to our relatives and collect a few bread coupons, which we gave to the family of those who were in jail. So we gained some experience in this way. Then, by the time of the Prague uprising, my dad said: ‘Girls, you know what, come with us and help us’. ‘But what are we going to do there? We don’t know how to shoot’. But in the end we went and helped my parents. Even though we were just young girls, we weren’t frightened of anything. We were firm in our resolve to help. So my dad took us to the prison where he was the commander of that unit, as I’ve already told you. The wounded started pouring in from Pečkárna and from Pankrác. It was an awful sight. You can hardly describe it with words. You can’t imagine it.”

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    byt paní Žolčákové, 01.04.2014

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    duration: 37:57
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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We should really hold this beautiful country dear

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Jaruška Žolčáková

Jaruška Žolčáková was born in 1929 in Prague in a middle-class family. Her unusual, diminutive name was given by the fact that her father wished desperately to have a daughter. From the outset of the war, her parents were determined to get involved in the resistance against the Nazis. Her father became the commander of a unit in the Ruzyně penitentiary. Jaruška and her sister were chasing for food coupons and distributing them to those who needed them. The family was itself deprived of food. Her mother starved and would rather give away her food to her three daughters. In the days of the Prague uprising, the family was in Ruzyně and together with her sister, Jaruška helped as a nurse. They would help every wounded, no matter whether he was Czech or German. The penitentiary was under fire from the German as well as the Russian army. The nearby water tower was shot to pieces and the whole premises of the prison were instantly flooded. At daybreak of May 9, the tanks of the Red Army finally made it to the prison walls. After the liberation, Prague witnessed the arrival of trains carrying the former inmates of the concentration camps. Many of the friends of Jaruška’s family did not survive the war and Jaruška vainly tried to track them down later on.

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