My father was on death row. I mourned Stalin as a kid.
Stáhnout obrázek
Ivana Jirovcová was born in Nymburk on 6 February 1944 but spent her youth in nearby Poděbrady. Her father Josef Jirovec was in the anti-Nazi resistance as a member of the Šíma-Uher 777 group. The Gestapo arrested him in early 1945 and he was to be executed in May. He eventually escaped alive from the Terezín Small Fortress, but the communists nationalized his car repair shop after the war and he was allowed in as a labourer in the national enterprise. Neither Ivana nor her younger sister were allowed into high school because of their origins. Ivana Jirovcová took language courses and typing classes. Later, she earned her high school diploma in an evening school. She and her younger sister went abroad in the summer of 1968, obtained scholarships and spent a year at the University of Caen, France. They extended their scholarships one year later until December 1969, but stayed in France afterwards and therefore lost the opportunity to return to Czechoslovakia for some time. Ivana Jirovcová graduated from the University of Paris and worked for Adic Press and Radio France Internationale. She lived in Paris in 2019.
