We had no idea about the extermination camps
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Jaroslava Hrudová, née Friedmannová, was born on 27 February 1923 in Pehlřimov into a Jewish family. Her father worked as a veterinarian, her mother was a housewife taking care of her two daughters. In 1937 the family moved to Litoměřice where Jaroslava‘s father found a job. Following the occupation of the Sudetenland in the fall of 1938 the family left for Prague. Jaroslava Hrudová attended a grammar school in Litoměřice and later transferred to a women‘s professions school in Prague. In 1940 the Friedmann family managed to leave the country. Thanks to an uncle who lived in England they obtained an entry visa to Yugoslavia from where they travelled to Marseille. From France they sailed to England and settled down in London where they had spent the whole war period. Jaroslava Hrudová studied there and later worked as a clerk. In the summer of 1945 the whole family returned to Prague. Many of their relatives had not survived the war, either dying in concentration camps or being executed. Before 1948 Jaroslava worked in Prague as a clerk for UNRRA (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration). In 1948 she got married to a medical doctor and moved to Kladno. There she taught at an elementary school and lived there up until 2011 when she moved to an old people‘s home in Hagibor, Prague.