Marie Zajícová

* 1937

  • "When was she actually banned from teaching?"-"They forbade her to teach later, the inspector, because she went to religion lessons, because she was a believer. The inspector came, and: 'Do you believe?', he was shouting at her. He asked if she settled accounts with the question of religion. And teachers used to say they did, and he left them alone. And our mother told herself: 'If I don't say anything, it´ll probably be better.' And he said: 'Well, do you believe?' And she used to tell us: 'I couldn't say I didn't. So I said: I believe.' And she was fired. 'Well, don't come back tomorrow!'"

  • The state was run by idiots "Did you believe it would ever end? How did you see the prospect?" - "I didn't think much about it. I thought it would never end. I mean, it was terrible. Such idiots running the country! The village secretary came to our village, and he wrote a public notice, for the village, three lines, and he had eight grammatical errors in it. And we, children, took a red pencil, and we marked the mistakes for him. He was a trained bricklayer. And he used to say, 'My hands will never work again.'"

  • "My uncle was such a progressive farmer, so I guess that's why he went first. Well, then they told him that his cows were thin, [it was] because they took their grain and all their fodder to the state-owned farms, so he had nothing to feed them. They said he had skinny cows, that it was a sabotage,that they were sabotaging."

  • "I was about eight years old then, after the war. I was looking out the window and they were going in the wagons, everybody had a little bundle, adults, young children, and I felt so sorry for them and I was crying. And I thought, 'If Hitler had won, this is how we would be going and who knows where.'"

  • “We were ordered to provide accommodation for them and to let them inside our house; they were to spend the night there. Well, we were also told to lend them some blankets and so we lent them blankets and they slept in the barn. They probably had their own food, because, I don’t know, but they didn´t go to us for eating. Well, and they were Hungarians, for example, all kinds of nationalities that were fighting with the Germans. And then on the following day they were leaving and they left an unexploded grenade in between our gate. I don’t know if they dropped it, or if they had placed it there on purpose.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Jihlava, 21.03.2017

    (audio)
    duration: 50:29
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Slavonice, 04.08.2020

    (audio)
    duration: 01:35:29
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Work honestly and with joy so that you will be able to say: I enjoyed doing whatever I did

Marie Zajícová
Marie Zajícová
photo: witness´s archive

Marie Zajícová, née Hotařová, was born on 4 August 1937 in Menhartice near Jemnice into a family of private farmers. In 1945 she experienced the retreat of the German army in her native village, the liberation by Soviet soldiers and the expulsion of citizens of Austrian nationality. In the 1950s she witnessed the collectivization of agriculture in Menhartice, during which her mother’s brother František Niederhafner was imprisoned. She graduated from the grammar school in Moravské Budějovice, but she was not allowed to continue her studies and had to work in a cooperative farm. Her mother, a teacher, was dismissed from school because of her declared belief in God. In 1957 Marie married Miloslav Zajic and together they raised two children. She worked as a draughtswoman at Agroprojekt, a forest worker and a warehouse worker. In 2020 she was living in Antonínov Důl in Vysočina region.