Osudové manželství Jarmily Taussigové

• Authors: Martin Potůček

Title variants

EN

The fateful marriage of Jarmila Taussigová

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

In this memoir-like contribution, based largely on documents from the family archive, the author presents the fate and relationship of his mother, Jarmila Taussigová-Potůčková (1914-2011), and her first husband, František Taussig (1909-1941), in a social and political context. František Taussig, a Jew from a small business family, a communist journalist, and a member of the first illegal Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (Komunistická strana Československa, KSČ) after the German occupation, was arrested in February 1941 and executed at the end of September of the same year for resistance activities. Jarmila Janovská, born into a family of Masaryk supporters and freethinkers, was a member of the Communist Student Faction (Komunistická studentská frakce, Kostufra), and an active communist and resistance fighter. She was arrested by the Nazis in June 1941 and imprisoned in the Ravensbrück concentration camp until the end of the war. They married on the eve of the Second World War. After the liberation, the widowed Jarmila decided to dedicate the rest of her life to the memory of her husband by leaving her original profession as a geodesic engineer and working instead for the realization of communist ideals. She found a job in the party central secretariat, was subsequently elected to the Central Committee and, after the coup in February 1948, became a member of the influential Party Control Commission (Komise stranické kontroly). Despite the escalating anti-Semitism within the party itself, and despite the fact that she married the physician František Potůček (1913-1995) in 1948 and took his surname in her civilian life, she decided, even as a non-Jew, to continue to use her surname from her first marriage in her political work. This stubbornness may have contributed to her being arrested in November 1951 in connection with the case of party Secretary General Rudolf Slánský (1901-1952), who was later executed, accused of fabricated crimes, and sentenced to twenty- five years in prison for treason in January 1954. However, unlike almost all her comrades in similar circumstances, she never confessed to her alleged crimes. She was released under a presidential amnesty in 1960 but was not fully rehabilitated until January 1968. During the Prague Spring, she became involved in the activities of the Former Political Prisoners' Club K 231 (Klub bývalých politických vězňů, K 231), which sought to rehabilitate the victims of communist repression. She then devoted herself to literary work under her birth name, reflecting her own life experiences, which she published in samizdat editions before November 1989.

Keywords

CS

Československo; Komunistická strana Československa (KSČ); protifašistický odboj; antisemitismus; politické procesy; Jarmila Taussigová-Potůčková; František Taussig

EN

Czechoslovakia; Communist Party of Czechoslovakia; anti-fascist resistance; anti-Semitism; political trials; Jarmila Taussigová-Potůčková; František Taussig

Discipline

• HISTORY: HISTORY

• Publisher: Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Soudobé dějiny (Contemporary History)
• Year: 2025
• Volume: 32
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 217-240
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Martin Potůček

• Soudobé dějiny, redakce, Ústav pro soudobé dějiny AV ČR, v.v.i., Vlašská 9, 118 40 Praha 1, Czech Republic