Ljalková (born Petrušáková) was born in Horodenka, Poland (today in Ukraine) to a family of Volhynian Czechs. She lost her parents at the age of 12 and then lived with her aunt in Stanisławów (today Ivano-Frankivs'k, Ukraine) where she met her first husband, Michal Ljalko. After the World War she remarried twice.After the German attack on the Soviet Union, Ljalková together with her husband joined the First Czechoslovak Independent Field Battalion as a volunteer in March 1942, aged 21. She then 