Květoslava Zajanová

* 1945

  • "Well, when I was working in the post-operative room, I don't know, one day a father and daughter were brought in. They were driving from Jesenice, they had a cottage there, they were repairing the cottage and they drove off that dirt road onto a normal road and were swept away by a tank. Well, the gentleman, Křenek was called, had a crushed knee, here this one had a completely open, open fibula, tibia bone, it was just almost scrapped, and his girl had a broken femur, so there was a lot of running around. The girl got an extension, they sewed it all up and there were problems with that Mr. Křenek, it was really pretty bad. Well, somehow they took him to Pilsen, he lay there for a long time, and once I met him here at the hospital and he lost his leg. So he can thank the Russians that it just happened that way, and he wasn't alone, he wasn't alone whom an accident happened in such a way."

  • „So that day was so strange for me because I got up, turned on the radio and heard: come to Czechoslovak Radio, we have tanks here, we are surrounded by tanks. I said, what's going on, have they gone crazy or something, are broadcasting the Dumb barricade in the morning?! So I turned it off and said I'd go shopping and cook later, because my husband didn't go to the barracks to eat, but he went home, so I said, I was going to do the shopping. Arma was here, so I went, people were shopping, they bought everything, bread, I said damn it, I would still have at least a quarter of bread left, but there was. I said, I needed to buy meat, there was a meat shop in Hleďsebe. So I went and there was almost nothing on sale there, I said, that's kind of strange. Then the husband came to lunch and said we were in trouble, there were tanks around the barracks, the Russians came here. So I said, Jesus Christ, what a day.“

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    Velká Hleďsebe, 06.04.2022

    (audio)
    duration: 55:34
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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I will always be grateful to my mother for giving me the opportunity to graduate

Květoslava Zajanová in 2022
Květoslava Zajanová in 2022
photo: Post Bellum

Květoslava Zajanová was born on April 16, 1945 in Vyškov. The older sister worked as a general practitioner in Olomouc, and Květoslava also wanted to work in the healthcare sector. She graduated from the Secondary Medical School in Brno and was placed in her native Vyškov as a nurse. She met her husband in 1966 and married him a year later, together they raised two sons. Her husband was a professional soldier and he was stationed in Klimentov near Mariánské Lázně, where they moved together. Here they also lived through the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact troops in August 1968. In 1972, the husband was dismissed from the army because he did not agree to the occupation. At that time, Květoslava worked in the hospital in Mariánské Lázně, where she lasted until the fall of totalitarianism in 1989. Together with colleagues from the hospital, she went to jingle keys at anti-communist demonstrations in November 1989. After the revolution, she worked for ten years in a retirement home as a caregiver. In 2022, she lived in the village of Velká Hleďsebe.