Olga Dolníčková

“My husband and I travelled around with a vending van, and that had to be tidied. I was cleaning up, I had a broom, and [the election committee] happened to arrive just as I was sweeping the van with the broom. Well, and then I read in the district papers, I didn’t go to the elections, I told them: ‘Look, chaps, I don’t have time, I won’t go, and if I want to I will, but I won’t be throwing it in here, I’m no invalid,’ in short, I didn’t want to. Well, and they wrote: ‘She took a broom to the election committee,’ but it wasn’t against the election committee. Or maybe it was, I don’t know, I was sweeping it around. Perhaps it was.”

“There we just divided up who will go where, to which factory. I was given the technical school and the students there, opposite Dyje is where the school is. I think it’s there to this day. Well, and the boys were bit more agile than us who came to them, so they wanted to form a procession straight away. And it all met up on the square where the church is, so that was empty back then, and that’s where we gathered. Everyone who wanted to demonstrate, because a nationwide strike had been declared. In the meantime while we were getting ready, I taught the boys the song: ‘Like a storm the relentless voice booms, he who suffered for centuries, will live in freedom again; rise up, Czech nation, hide not under the eaves, be ready at any moment, to let your shackles fall.’ And it goes to a well-known melody. Those boys had learnt it in a flash. The technical school then went marching up to the square singing this. The boys were so energetic, lots of the people who had come there were staring at us. But suddenly the whole square knew how to sing it, and it was repeated several times.”

“They sent them to Vyškovec when... How to describe in brief? They came there when they left Slovakia. They left, they had to leave, because Slovakia was an independent state, they’d always tended towards that. And back in thirty-nine they snuggled up with Hitler and began shouting ‘Czechs out!’. Of course, there was a big Czech community there, mainly teachers, postmasters, gendarmes. Because [the Slovaks] really didn’t know how to read, write, there really was widespread illiteracy there. My mum was from Pavlovice, she rode there sometimes by bike across the borders via Hodonín, and she taught in Holič or somewhere, and Dad, he was appointed to Drietoma, that’s here close to Starý Hrozenkov, and they taught in Slovakia. But when the Slovaks started shouting ‘Czechs out!’, Dad switched the radio on, and then he always told me: ‘Remember that wording’ - ‘The Slovak government,’ there was none, ‘is handing these Czechs over to the Prague government.’ And because his surname was Bohuslav, he was read about third or fourth on the list. They read it in alphabetical order. So he knew straight away what had happened.”

“I then attended those civic forums, but I stopped liking it later on because people starting coming who... And I don’t mind saying it - I got into the district privatisation committee, legally, and suddenly my hair stood on ends in horror because it was already full of those studied gents from some of the farms, who wanted something sent their way, because everything had to be processed by the privatisation committee. I even had several visits, I must say my husband protested about that, right inside our house in the evenings. The studied gent wanted, they were already lobbying like that back then, he wanted me to vote for this and that in the district privatisation committee. In short, for me to vote for this and not for that. So that started making me angry, none of that. But that’s how we are.”