"Once I was at school, I went to Vizovice, and the teacher said to me:" Jiřinka, you're going home with me today." So I did. And she said: 'Take it off. I'll give you some clothes. You can't walk around like that; wearing a woolen coat and such a dress. I said I knew, but I had nothing else to wear. She gave me a black three-quarter coat, a checkered pleated skirt and blouse. I was glad to be dressed just like other girls.”
“The guerrillas were in the woods and we lived a little under the woods, so they were very close to us. That was a mistake. I was always sent to my uncle, my dad's brother, who lived further in the woods, about half an hour away. The only way there was through the forest. My mother always said: 'For God's sake, don't send my daughter there, they'll kill her.' So I used to go there as a guerilla and nothing ever happened. The guerrillas stayed even more at our uncle´s than in our country, because he lived entirely in the forest. They were close to the mountain, and every time I came, hurry, hurry away. The Germans did not go to the mountains. There they weren't sure if there was a guerrilla behind every tree.”
"Somebody reported us. We didn't know back then, but then we did. It was a normal morning. My mother milked cows and sent me to look at the goose that was supposed to be sitting on eggs to become goslings. I walked out of the barn and saw my dad standing there only in his shirt. There were Germans already. It was very cold. I said: 'Dad, you are cold. I'll just bring you a coat.' He just said,' Don't wear it, Jiřinka. It won't be cold much longer. They dug some explosives in our manure. I don't know where they got it. And somebody saw them and told us because the Germans went for sure.”
Jiřina Straková was born on 14 March 1932 in Prlov in the Vsetín region. His parents, Anna and Jan Turýn, had a large farm in the meadows in Prlovy. Since about autumn 1944 the family helped partisans who belonged to the brigade of Jan Zizka. Jiřina was their connection at the age of thirteen years. She informed partisans about the presence of Germans in the village. On Monday, April 23, 1945, the SS troops surrounded the village, burned eight farms and murdered over twenty people who helped guerrillas. Among burnt victims were both her parents. Orphaned Jiřina stayed with her relatives until she was sixteen. Then she worked as a worker in rubber factories for seven years, a former Bata factory in Zlín, which the Communist nationalized. After the wedding she moved to Ostrava-Zábřeh. She had three children. But the marriage was not happy and ended in divorce. Until her retirement she was a cook in the school canteen. She gained the status of a war veteran and a member of the anti-Nazi resistance. She died in 2022.
