Marianna Grznárová

* 1941

  • There were enough communists in our country, which was quite mandatory. They even made me cry when I said that I am not in the Party, They said I can't start work, because they just need to accept party members. I cried, I already resigned from newspaper Ľud, yeah, well. This was a blow to me. They called me a few days later and said that they had decided, and that even though I don't want to, they need people to write for them. There were a few of us...

  • And during the holidays, the teachers could have special recreation, so great. Great, except that my mother's colleague and my former classmate and suitor stuck his head in the window and he thought it was very funny: "Hahaha, the Russians have occupied us!" And my mother got scared, it was the geting scary type - she as a teacher. I said: "Don't listen to him, he's an idiot!" And it was true. And what now? Mom said that under no circumstances would she leave the five-liter canning jar there, which she had boiled for all of us. So we with a five-liter glass of lecha, with Karina, who was still in a pram and with her siblings, and so on - even on the train. We had to take the bus, and when we got on the passenger train and went through Levice, around the Levice station, Hungarian soldiers on their own, not Russian, but Hungarian, but apparently, I don't know about it, military ones, just what drove, hey. But Bratislava, it was already completely occupied. I left them in Šurany, I bought them, because I already knew how to orient myself enough, at the railway station, a bag of potatoes, what one needs when occupying a foreign army, hey. So she dragged the bag, I left them with a bag of potatoes and I went to Bratislava by myself. And Bratislava is already complete, that is, Februárka, where we lived at that time and all those blocks were destroyed by those tanks and this was already there and it was growling, and of course everything on the streets and everywhere those slogans. Everywhere, everywhere, which then had to be covered up so quickly.

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Bratislava, 19.05.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 02:14:10
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th century
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

I don’t have my own motto and I take everything with a grain of salt

Marianna Grznárová was born on December 1, 1941 in Rudno nad Hronom (Žarnovica district). She spent her childhood in a family with four siblings, whom she helped take care of - her mother was a teacher, her father worked as a police officer. During the Second World War, the family survived air raids and air raids, from which they hid in the basement of the local office building together with other villagers. Witness studied at the Eleven-Year High School in Šurany, where she graduated in 1959 and then continued her studies at the Pedagogical Institute in Nitra between 1959 and 1963. At first she went to teach in order to obtain a teacher’s apartment, but due to disagreements with the local school principal, she left her job as a teacher and took in Bratislava in the library, later in the editorial office of the newspaper Ľud, after a while she worked in the Czechoslovak Radio and then in television. During her work on television as a screenwriter and novelist, she created classic works for children and young people such as Maťko and Kubko (the book won several awards), Zvučka Večerníčka and others. Witnesses husband emigrated to Canada in 1968, and her daughter left for France in 1985. Marianne’s daughter entrusted a minor six-month-old son, whom she took care of herself. She never joined the KSČ. He currently lives in Bratislava - Dúbravka with his grown-up grandson.