Mária Binderová

* 1946

  • "Then years passed, my whole life passed, until I moved here. And of course the beginnings were difficult. Again, it wasn't what I imagined in my soul, I had to adapt. It was hard for a couple of years in the beginning. And I, as I was praying and thinking about it, I remembered this text. Or I was wondering what's the point of this life, after all this is complete nonsense... And I remembered this text years later, when I didn't know that I had read the book, that the contemplative monastery is such a beacon, we are the workers. And we can live here, we have to do our duty that we have to the Lord God, and it turns into this lighthouse that protects people from that cliff. And to me, that answered you for existing in this monastery."

  • "At the interrogation, it was a room full of all kinds of police officers, I had the impression that there were also many young people who were learning, but simply, there were too many of them. A gentleman came there, a prosecutor from Košice, and he asked me questions. I was very afraid, don't let anyone tell me that in such a situation..., who can keep a cool head, it's good. My knees were shaking like that, but of course I held on outwardly, but inwardly... And there I can tell you one thing, which is not about the investigation, but about the Lord God. When I sat down on that stool, like that, facing the investigator, everything fell off me, I was so calm and so sure inside that I don't know to this day where it came from. Well, at the same time the investigator tried to prove to me that I was a nun and that I was secret, that I had some kind of activity with young people and I don't know what. And of course I either didn't answer or I denied it. And he says to me: 'What are you denying, I know! We have a list and it says you're on it.' And I said, 'Well, please show me the list.' And he said he couldn't. 'Come on, you don't think I'm going to confess to a list that I don't know if it even exists, who wrote it, who signed it, and who verified it.' I totally threw them off, but I don't know where that came from in me, I don't know. And then that's how it ended. They kept us there for those 48 hours, but they let us out at midnight, on Monday. And I told them that I wasn't going to leave here unless they gave me an excuse, that I was supposed to be at work this Monday, and that I wasn't going to take a vacation to sit in the police station. And imagine, they gave it to me, they wrote that I was there. But it was one hell of a thing after that because the cops apparently got reprimanded by their boss for what document they put in my hand, and then they came to my boss at work to give them back the document. I had to hand it in to the personnel department as proof that I wasn't at work. Well, it was a circus, but it happened!"

  • "But when dad came out of prison, he was a different person, of course. He was extremely withdrawn, he didn't understand the development that society had gone through in those five years, that we children had gone through. He didn't understand us wanting to live. Do you understand? He saw life from a completely different position. Those were two very difficult years. And that mom played a big role again. She was a kind of mediator between Dad's attitudes and opinions and ours. Mom was brave. But it wasn't all negative. Dad didn't tell us much about the prison, but he said, 'I don't regret those years, I learned there what life is, what faith is, what people are.' He went through all the prisons, I think, from Leopoldov to Minkovice... He met Father Zvěřina in prison, and he described to us that he wanted to go to Holy Confession. So they both went to the dentist, and while they were waiting, he confessed. He remembered Father Zvěřina with great respect, that he helped him to basically get his bearings, to regain his breath."

  • "And he [my father] was a brave man, modest, and I think he had a very good reputation in the village. People from the village, they were still peasants then, they were nationalized then, I remember that as a child, peasants used to come to our father. Because they would come to mill a sack or two of grain, and before it was milled, they would talk together in the mill yard. And I think they all respected my dad and gave his opinion. And the communists later on wanted to take advantage of that and wanted to force this dad to tell them what the peasants thought. And Dad refused. And I, as a child, I remember, I was doing my homework at the table, and his classmate came to him, and I understood that, he was the one who encouraged him to cooperate. Dad said no, that 'If it's good, the peasants will go there themselves, why should I...' And the man said to him, 'Don't think that we don't have you in our hands, we can turn you in.' The peasants even sabotaged it, they didn't even want to, I don't know what all the problems were. And as a warning, they arrested my father and attributed some economic crime to him, that he had stolen something or taken something from the mill, basically trivialities."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Brno, 31.05.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 01:41:59
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Brno, 18.06.2024

    (audio)
    duration: 53:13
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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I’m looking for the truth about my life

Mária Immaculata Binderová
Mária Immaculata Binderová
photo: Archive of the witness

Mária Immaculata Binderová was born in Stupava, Slovakia, on 10 February 1946, the fifth of seven children in the family of the miller Vavrinec and Maria Binder. Her beautiful childhood on the family mill was disrupted by the onset of the communist regime. The mill was nationalised and the father, who was a local authority, was sentenced to ten years in a hard prison after a mock trial. With the mark of a convict’s daughter, the witness trained as a bookbinder. In the mid-1960s she completed a three-year printing course in Leipzig, Germany. After graduating, she worked in a print shop and devoted her free time to working with children without children. She found support in the illegal community of Franciscan Sisters, among whom she was accepted in 1979. Since the raid on the Franciscan order in 1983, she has been under constant surveillance by the State Security. She was greatly encouraged by her participation in the 1985 Velehrad pilgrimage. After the Velvet Revolution she studied spiritual theology in Rome and participated in the revitalization of the Slovak Province of the School Sisters of St. Francis. Since 1998, she has been a member of the contemplative community of the Poor Clares in Brno-Soběšice.