Irena Truplová

* 1943

  • “It was in 1947 and we started hearing about the re-emigration of Volhynian Czechs. But no Ukrainians and no mixed marriages. My mum’s sister Nastya saw to it all and she included my mum in the application. So it was all in secret. When the last wagon was prepared in April 1947 - everyone else had already left - that was the last train for the last of us to leave. So she took us on her back and ran. They were waiting for her and she got on the train. She escaped in the night, with no papers, nothing. We travelled for two weeks. We stopped in Chop, I remember that, we were four years old then. We slept on a crate of grain. There was a black cow with us, Mura. When we arrived in Chop - we stayed there a fortnight - all I ever saw there were soldiers and nurses in white. And they started giving us chocolate, cocoa, vitamins, all sorts of things. And we didn’t want it, we spat it out because we had never had that. We had only ever had potatoes, milk and buns. Mum said that we didn’t have anything else there.”

  • “They said that Granddad Parfenyuk used to bring them (the partisans) potatoes, grain and bread. And my father they said he was a courier, that he was helping them. That was already when they had formed the brigade with General Ludvík Svoboda and we were housing the HQ, General Kovpak and the rest. Antonín Tichý stayed there, he was here from Poruba (Ostrava, Silesia). The army was already forming. Someone indicted Dad of being a courier, of helping them. So they took the whole family, anyone with the name of Parfenyuk. There were seven of them. They took Dad from the theatre, they took him to the prison in Lutsk. That was in late December, and on the 14th of January they executed him as a cautionary example. Before that my mum went there with us in her arms and with Grandma. She went to beg, saying she had her husband there and Grandma Parfenyuk her son. The one man who was standing guard gave Grandma a kicking. So Mum grabbed us and ran for it. We then found out that they shot them all in the night. They couldn’t even give our mum and grandma a death certificate. When the Soviet army came, the graves were opened and the dead had to be identified. My mum didn’t go, but Grandma did and she recognised Adam according to his ring.”

  • “My uncle would send parcels from Africa, money. The secret police came every time. I remember it as if it was today. We had a large three-part wardrobe from the Germans. They threw everything out and took it all. But they left us our clothing. They took pictures of the parcels. He always sewed it into the shirts, dollars or gold, and they came to snatch it from us.”

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    Opava, 05.06.2013

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Her Ukrainian father was executed by the Nazis

Irena Truplová in her youth
Irena Truplová in her youth
zdroj: archiv pamětnice

Irena Truplová, née Parfenyuk, was born in 1943 in Josefin in Polish Volhynia. Her mother came from the community of Volhynian Czechs and her father was Ukrainian. Irena was less than a year old when her father, Adam Parfenyuk, was one of a group of relatives executed by the Nazis for aiding partisans. Her grandfather was shot by the Banderites. Her mother secretly re-emigrated to Czechoslovakia in 1947, where she struggled to make a living as a widow with no means. In 1961, Irena married Stanislav Trupl, a Czech from Soběslav whose father had, as a self-employed man, been unjustly convicted in a mock trial to five years of prison in the 1950s. In 1977, Irena Truplová became head of the Cadre (ideology) and Personnel Department in the Opavia Opava chocolate factory. She was also chairwoman of the ZO ROH (local part of the national Revolutionary Trade Union Movement) and was elected secretary of the District Trade Union Council (DTUC) in Opava in 1979, which position she retained until 1988. The position required her to join the communist party, and she also underwent expert unionist training and spent six months studying at the Trade Union University in Moscow. In 1988, Irena Truplová became the chairwoman of the DTUC in Opava and remained in the position until the DTUC was abolished after the fall of the Communist regime. She now lives in Opava and is an active member of the Czech Association of Freedom Fighters and the Czechoslovak Legionary Community in Opava.