Natália Vráblová

* 1930

  • "This was one of our youngest monasteries. It has been so for seven, eight sisters, maybe eleven. It was the first branch of Trnava. There had kindergarten and elementary school. So only Modra and surroundings. So there they establish the concentration monastery. The domestic sisters there were ten. And now there they brought us - 36. And as we arrived, so there was an Agent, "for novices there is no place." Novices here, have no place here , cannot fit. For they had already calculated how many people they bring here. But fortunately there is one of those domestic sisters said, "a place is found." And we were staying in school, in the Cabinet. Then they brought the whole community of Kosice, 40 sisters. From Bratislava most of the sisters went to Semerovce, but some came to the Modra. So we were really staying in those classes. One bed side by side. When we wanted to wash we could not, we each had a washbasin and that was it. Bed, in between tiny forehead, that we should sail separated."

  • "So we went to the chapel, where we prayed, sang, but those who came to us, those secret police, you know who it was, they were in. Our Superior told them to go out for something. And in mean time we went out as we locked the gate and from within barred it. We are in the chapel praying, singing. They have shouted "in the name of law, open to us!" And we still did not react. We just continue to pray and sing. What did they do? On the ground floor were bars, so they then cut the bars to one room. Thus they went inside. Thus we know that others have no choice but to really pack and go. It was from morning to afternoon"

  • "Once it was also prophetic, we were working on the Old Testament, and there were the Israelites who wandered 40 years in the wilderness. And then we said that who knows, if it is in our country that 40 years we will wander this way. That he espoused in the land they are only received by those who were born there. So we alsowill get to the monastery. And indeed it actually happened that 40 years we have traveled this way. And after 40 years, we have come to our monasteries. And then we spoke: "Do you still live to be that." And the one that sain those things lived it, she died when she was 92. A sick since childhood was she, yet so brave, for generations, as she had the initial formation."

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    Bratislava, 12.05.2010

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    duration: 58:41
    media recorded in project Witnesses of the Faith
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I worked like all of them, even instead of them if it was necessary.

Natália Vráblová
Natália Vráblová
photo: archív Rímskej únie Rádu sv. Uršule

Sister Natalia Vrablova was born in Stara Tura as the fifth of thirteen children. After four years of study, she graduated on Ursula’s Teachers’ academy in Trnava. Here, she decided to enter the Ursula’s as a postulant she comes to the community in Batizovce. About half of them was later admitted to the novitiate in Batizovce. In 1950, she was forcibly exported from her home monastery to concentration monastery in Modra. In 1951 she was moved to the Czech Republic where she worked in a textile factory. Here secretly she took her first vows. In 1957 she took her perpetual vows. She continues to work in a textile factory in difficult conditions. Since 1966 she starts working in institutions for the mentally disabled youth. After 1989, she returns to Trnava, to restore Ursula’s School - Gymnázium sv. Angela Merici. This is the first Catholic school in Slovakia after the fall of communism. She currently lives in Sucha nad Parnou.