„And I went shopping that day or the following day. And it was extremely unpleasant. I went there with my little Pert, I was holding him in my hands. We were coming back from shopping and tanks were driving in the opposite direction. There was nobody else but me and my child in the street and the tanks which were driving down the street. And even worse than the tanks were the soldiers who were looking out of them and holding guns. And I was telling myself, for God's sake, if he (her son – trans.) moves a finger, he will shoot us. So, I thought don´t look left, look ahead, or look right so that you don´t see the tanks. However, I can tell you that I was scared. They were young men; they did not know at all what was going on and where they were. It was horrible and I still vividly remember it."
"The second sad event was when they transported Jews, the town PA system announced that certain people were to come on a certain day at a certain time to the square. The Metzls family lived behind us. They had a daughter Věra, she was a pretty girl, she had beautiful black long curly hair. They had a little grocery shop; I do not understand how they made a living from it. I do not understand it at all. And just ahead of us down by the creek was the synagogue. But there was no rabbi there, but this Mr. Metzl stood in for the rabbi. I remember that we sometimes heard songs coming from the synagogue, services took place there. Věra had a boyfriend who was not a Jew. He was a Christian and her father actually might have saved her had he permitted her to marry a Christian. However, he was I could say bigot, he was an orthodox Jew, and he did not allow her to marry him. I again remember it as if it was a picture that they were walking to the square along our house, I was on the first floor and was looking out of the closed window. And all windows in the street were closed, all doors were closed, the street was empty, nobody was there. And those three people wearing black, he was wearing a hat and all three of them were carrying a little suitcase and they were slowly walking towards their death, walking to the square. I think that they took them away by car, I do not know exactly, and it ended the way it ended. It was a sad look."
Marie Sovová née Janečková was born on 3 May 1932 in Černovice in the area of Tábor. Her parents run a department store there. She witnessed the deportation of the Jews from Černovice. The enterprise and all the properties of the Janeček family were confiscated by communists in 1950. After finishing her studies at the town school in Černovice, she passed the secondary school-leaving exam. She was not admitted to study at university for the first time because of her bourgeois origin and she spent a year working in a pharmacy laboratory. She studied Pharmacy at the university in Brno from 1952 to 1957. She started to work as a teacher at the Faculty of Pharmacy shortly after graduation. She got married to her university colleague Jaroslav Sova in 1959. From 1960 to 1971, she worked in Bratislava where the faculty was moved from Brno. She taught Pharmacy at the newly established faculty in Hradec Králové from 1971. She also experienced the Velvet Revolution there. Marie Sovová lived in Hradec Králové in 2021.
