Marie Jakubíčková

* 1932

  • „But my friends were already talking about which seamstress was going to make their dresses for the school-leaving exam, it used to be a festive occasion then. Nowadays they buy it here at a second-hand shop. And I want to tell you. A dress. Oh, I came home and I was like: ,But I don't have an exam dress!' So my dad wrote to my older sister, who was married, asking if by chance she had her exam dress. She graduated four years before me. The dress arrived and it was beautiful because it had been made in a fashion salon. Because my sister grew up in the aunt's house in Kroměříž. And the aunt was rich, she had a wholesale shop, a wholesale bakery, so it was all fancy. And the dress arrived, I went to take the exam. I´m standing at the door of the examination room and I wonder what's going on. A boy was holding a pile of blue shirts over his arm like this and a girl was holding pleated skirts: ,Here you´ll stop and go to change.' And I, already full of a kind of farmer´s pride or whatever it was in me, I just said: ,No, we didn't agree on this.' And I grabbed the door handle and I went calmly to take the exam. What was going on in teachers´ heads, I don't know, since I was the only one in the whole class wearing a dress, and by what miracle I graduated with honours. I walked out of the class and the teacher of Czech language ran up to me and she started kissing and hugging me."

  • „He was ordered by, I don't know if it was called National Committee or Revolutionary Committee, he was just ordered to come to the school yard with a hay wagon. He arrived, and they drove the inhabitants of the school, the Germans, they weren't even from Sudeten, they were from beyond the border, Deutschland, so they brought them onto the hay wagon and told the man, Kožurik, that he had to take them to the forest. And that meant certain death, because they had shot enough Germans there. And suddenly Josef Kožurik started to vomit, he couldn't bear it. So one young woman grabbed the reins and shouted: ,Let's go!' And she hit the horses and off they went. And then what happened. The murderers were riding next to them and behind the water, as they were coming out of Skřivany to the bridges over the river Cidlina, suddenly an army convoy with a white flag was approaching from the forest. They were surrendering. And they were Germans and the murderers scattered and the people were saved."

  • „So I was there when the time came when threshers and machines were being taken away from farmers. My father had even an automatic sheaf-binder, but they didn't take it away from us. To us they came and they were, I call them Werkschutz, but they weren't Werkschutz anymore, they were militia. And there were also women with revolvers, I know that. And us, children, we stood nearby, there were still six of us at home. And they weren´t taking the machines, they were taking the engines. So that the machines would be out of order. And my mother was there, too, and she said, because we were standing there in a row: ,Aren't you ashamed? Don't you feel sorry for those kids?' And they said: ,No!'"

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    Zlín, 17.04.2021

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    duration: 02:36:18
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We’ve been going our own way all our lives

Marie Jakubíčková, 1952
Marie Jakubíčková, 1952
photo: Witness´s archive

Marie Jakubíčková was born on 10 September 1932 in Skřivany near Nový Bydžov as the sixth of eleven children to Bořivoj and Marie Forbelský. Her parents were farmers who owned 50 hectares of land. Marie grew up in a family full of harmony, love and faith in God. The peaceful course of life was disrupted by the Second World War. One of her father’s sisters married a man who claimed German nationality, and because of this, Marie’s father almost fell victim to the post-war lynchings which took place in the region. In 1947, Marie started to go to the grammar school in Nový Bydžov. A year later, her father was declared to be a kulak by the communist regime. Marie herself had problems at the grammar school because of her faith. There was a risk she wouldn´t be allowed to graduate from the school. In 1951, the family was forced to hand over the farm to a cooperative farm. However, even before that, the communists, with the assistance of armed People’s Militia, had taken the engines out of all their agricultural machines. In spite of regime´s obstructions, Marie successfully graduated from high school and left Skřivany for Kroměříž. She started to work in Stavoprojekt as an office worker, where she stayed until her retirement. She and her husband Josef raised four children: Josef, Tomáš, Kateřina and Ondřej.