“I went with my daughters on Easter. We went by train. Once we crossed the border we could see the huge difference. We could smell smoke and coal. When I ask my daughters what the experience was to them, they say: ‘It reminded me of black and white photographs.’ When I was in the institute I would sometimes skip a lecture and go to the Myšák sweet shop. I took my daughters there. The place was just empty. They didn’t have the cakes they used to sell back in the day. We left the place even faster than we arrived. I found Prague in a worse condition than it was in when I left. I went shopping to a butcher’s with mum. My parents knew where to go to get good meat; they had their shops chosen. There was a big queue and two assistants behind the counter. I said I wanted a bit out of that piece over there. Mum pushed me in the back: ‘You can’t do that.’ – ‘Why not?’ Going back there were still border controls. It was a short time after the change. They asked: ‘Where are you coming from? Show me that piece of luggage!’ My daughters were quite scared by that.”
“When we were still allowed to travel, we went to Italy. It was in the summer, and then they invited us over in the autumn again. When I was at the police department to arrange the permits, I was told that this was to be our last trip. No permits would be issued afterwards. When we came to Italy we saw a different life. All thoughts were sidelined. You could say we felt completely differently in foreign countries from what we were told. We knew some people; we were in Italy for the third time. I was good friends with Helena, and I told her we would hardly get another chance to go abroad, so we decided to stay there. We were lucky to know people who could help us right from the beginning. We went to a police department one day before departure back home, and we heard the [Czech] policemen who were there to keep an eye on us in the next room; they came to collect our passports. We told the Italian policemen to give the passports to them so they would not get suspicious about anyone planning to stay there. Helena and I did not come to our team supper. I said, ‘Come on, Hela – without our luggage, we only have what we have on.’ We had to get our luggage. Our Italian friends went to the hotel to pick our luggage up, but they wouldn’t give it to them. Then they went to collect it again with a parson, and they retrieved it. Then, on the same day, they put us on a train at ten or eleven in the evening and we went to Trieste. We were supposed to contact the police, and from there we were taken to a refugee camp.”
“I felt freer in Czechoslovakia. Obviously, when you get to a different place, you are more cautious because you don’t know the place. As you get to know the place, you relax a little. The beginning is somewhat difficult. Maybe it’s a matter of one’s nature too. Some are open immediately, wherever they are, while others are shy. Sometimes you need to be more wary. I behaved the same way in Italy as I had in Czechoslovakia, but I was a bit more careful.”
Jaroslava Krejčová-Fabozzová was born to Božena and Jaroslav Krejčas in Prague on 27 August 1943. She spent her childhood in the working class environment in the Botič Creek valley. She graduated in teaching and physical education, and those vocations formed a major part of her life. Having graduated, she was deployed in Šluknov for a year. She spent the next three years as a substitute teacher in Prague, exercised gymnastics and started working as a technical manager for the TJ Slavia Praha girl football team, taking several trips to Germany with the team. She fled together with player Helena Jindráčková in January 1969 during Slavia’s trip to Florence. The ACF Fiorentina team became their home. She also coached young athletes. She obtained political asylum. Then she married Giovanni Fabozzo; she obtained Italian citizenship, gave birth to two daughters, and became part housewife and part employed in her husband’s porcelain company. She did not visit Czechoslovakia until 1990. She lives in Italy where her family is, and visits the Czech Republic twice a year.
