Jarmila Lebedová

* 1925

  • "Roads, houses, Úvoz, and near us Židenice, because of that arms factory, we also had a horribly, horribly damaged house. It was November, 20th of November [1944], and winter was already here. There wasn't glass left in a single window. Due to the air pressure it had all cracked and the glass had fallen out."

  • "The sirens started blaring. It was on Falkensteiner street [today Gorkéhostreet], And so quickly into the bunker. Well and I told myself, well I'll go and hide under Špilberk, it wasn't far. I flew under that Špilberk, but it was really last minute. I flew from behind the street, where now a tram rides, those gates are there still. I think, that it's accessible to people, everything that was there, under that hill. Oh how it was equipped. We could hide there. There were some supplies there, I don't know, how it all worked. But it was a truly tall hill, and so we hoped, that when a bomb falls there, it won't cave in. How it was packed in there! But what if I could not fit in there, little me. The policeman shouted at me: 'What are you still doing here, quickly, quickly!' I was then only a little bit away from the bunker. And so I fit in there and then it started falling. And so we waited out there, nobody was injured, fortunately. When they honked out, that the bombardment had ended, then this flood of people all over Brno, oh that was terrible."

  • "I remember that, because we had a trader with mixed goods three house down, he brought two boxes up to the attic, it was a stone of sugar. We had a butcher as a neighbor, and so - meat wasn't accessible just like that - but for the whole duration of the war we still had a little bit more given to us under the counter, than was specified on the cards. On the cards there was for example one sixteenth of milk for one person. And so homemakers, when they wanted to make cake, then a few of them found out, that soda water could also be used for cake. It didn't have the same taste of course, but a cake was baked and turned out nicely. And who was able to, had a garden or grew something, so that they could supplement their diet, because what was on the cards, well that was one sixteenth of milk per person. And so at breakfast in the morning, there was only black coffee - it was cereal coffee, not real coffee, that wasn't possible at all, maybe only some high-ranking politicians, but we didn't know coffee at all. Well and that menu for mothers was very hard back then. Who had a bit of a garden, they grew something. vegetables, salad, kohlrabi, trees were planted, were it could be done, fruit trees. And still in the end it wasn't on the cards."

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    Brno, 28.07.2022

    (audio)
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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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The sirens started ringing and the bunker was completely full

Jarmila Lebedová (50s)
Jarmila Lebedová (50s)
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Jarmila Lebedová, née Jílková, was born on the 12th of April 1925 in Židenice in Brno. With her parents Ludmila, née Flesslerová, and Jan Jílek, she grew up in the house of her grandfather Alois Flessler, who had been a businessman in the heating fuel sales sector. In the year 1931 she started attending the first grade, and after finishing her basic education she started studying at the grammar school of Křenová in Brno. After graduating in the year 1944 she was recruited into forced labor. From the year 1944 she repeatedly experienced the bombing of Brno. In one of the air raids her family lost their home and her father his tailoring workshop. Shortly after the liberation, she moved to the Brno countryside with her parents, where they waited out the last days of the war. After returning to Židenice she became witness to the resettlement of the Germans. In post-war Brno she wanted to expand her education and then work as a teacher. However, due to a shortage of teachers, she immediately started working at a school in Nedvědice (district Brno-venkov) and finished her qualification while working. During her teaching career she changed through a number of locations, in the Brno countryside and also directly in Brno, she taught primarily at elementary schools. She went into retirement in the year 1981. In the year 2022 she lived in a seniors‘ home in Brno.