Jiřina Kotalíková

“Not even bread was good during the war. Well, it all so… Since we had a small farm, we did have some grain. Well, the crops had to be surrendered, but of course, everyone kept something for themselves. And thus they saved something extra. At night we had to bring the grain to the mill, on a bicycle when it was dark, and the miller immediately exchanged this for flour for us and we rode back home with the flour at night.”

“It was an elementary school, which lasted five years, and then this was followed by three years in a higher elementary school, this is what corresponds to the second stage of elementary today. But for those of us who lived in those small villages which were far from the school, attendance was not mandatory and we did not have to go. We were allowed to spend the whole three years in the fourth grade, so to speak. And none of the girls went there. Only the smarter boys from our village continued in the second stage. Well, so I was a kind of pioneer.”