Our people took good care of us
Download image
Irena Hrbáčková, née Hlávková, was born on September 14, 1930 in Vojnův Městec in the region of Vysočina in what was then Czechoslovakia. She grew up in Račíně, where she completed elementary school and then went on to study a municipal secondary school. This was already at the time of the war. On October 26, 1944, the airborne guerilla brigade “Mistr Jan Hus” was landed on the territory of the Protectorate. Its commander was Alexander Fomin. Irena’s father Viktor and her brother Miroslav joined the guerillas and they provided the partisans with accommodation at their house. Later, the whole family of Irena left the house and followed the guerillas to the forests because they were afraid of German reprisals. Little Irena and her mother thus went wandering through the woods. They stayed over at some of the villages they crossed and helped the partisans with cooking food and the preparation of packs with medicaments. After the war was over, Irena Hrbáčková finished her secondary education and then went for an apprenticeship in the Moravolen in the Šumpersko region, where she subsequently worked in the Research Institute of Bast Fiber. In 1951, she married an army signalman and due to the character of her husband’s profession, they were on the road quite frequently. She thus gradually lived in Nové Mesto nad Váhom, in Znojmo, in Havlíčkův Brod, in Tábor and in Písek. In the last two of the places, she worked alongside her husband as a signalwoman for the army, serving in a military telephone switchboard office. She presently lives in Písek.
