Marie Sýkorová

* 1936

  • "As I listened to it repeatedly, I didn't like it. I don't like injustice. And so I thought to myself: they keep talking about it, and nothing happens, I will write to the minister. And I wrote that letter to that ministry. At that time, Ďuriš was the Minister of Agriculture. So I simply wrote a letter to him about how things are going in our village. About how they took those fields and that instead of grain, orach grows there. And that it is run by people who don't understand it. It improved over time - the cooperative, it was good and even became the best in the district. But it took some years before someone who understood it took it. They took away all those fields and cattle from those farmers."

  • “I remember when there was war, and they would say the word 'war', I couldn't imagine what it was - when they said 'when the war is over.' It had to be dark, even the policeman patrolled the village in the evening and at night, and there couldn't be any cracks anywhere. And my parents, my mother's sister and her brother used to go there. Back then, people used to go to plays, there were no televisions, and they used to go talk like this in the evening. And they always expanded some map and kept looking at it and listening to the radio. We couldn't imagine what they were looking for. So that was war.”

  • "The last year (it was springtime), we weren't allowed to go to school anymore. German families fleeing the front moved into that school - their wives and children. They were women and children. And they were those who made up the Hitlerjugend. The kids wore those daggers in their belts, and we didn't even go outside because they [the boys] were so aggressive."

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Chvalšiny, 20.07.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:43:37
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Chvalšiny, 25.08.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:15:29
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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I do not like injustice, so I wrote to the Minister

Marie Sýkorová, née Táborská, in 1953
Marie Sýkorová, née Táborská, in 1953
photo: Witness archive

Marie Sýkorová, née Táborská, was born on August 6, 1936, in Stříbřec, where she spent her entire childhood. During World War II, she witnessed a firefight between American and German aircraft and saw a German fighter jet being shot down. The wreckage of the plane landed near her. In the spring of 1945, she experienced the aggression of German youth from the Hitlerjugend housed in a local school. At the end of the war, during the retreat of the Wehrmacht, her father defended a strategically placed bridge to prevent its destruction and allow the Red Army to cross. She witnessed the withdrawal of the German army and the arrest of German prisoners and the subsequent arrival of Soviet soldiers in the village. In 1951, she observed the confiscation of her neighbours’ property, land and livestock as part of the forcible collectivization of agriculture. At that time, she wrote a letter to the Minister of Agriculture, Július Ďuriš, saying that she did not agree with it. In 1955, she married Jan Sýkora and together they raised three children. In 1968, they lived in the military district of Boletice, where they had an apartment and experienced the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. In 2021, Marie Sýkorová lived in Chvalšiny.