One‘s language is irrelevant. It is about what kind of person one is.
Marie Cigánová was born on 7 June 1936 in Hať in the Hlučín region. According to the October 1938 Munich Agreement the whole region became a part of the German Reich and all of its inhabitants including Marie have received German citizenship. In 1939 her father was enlisted to the German army. Marie recalls his visits home from that time. Four days into Hitler‘s June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, Marie‘s father was killed in action in Ukraine. In April 1945 Marie Cigánová saw the battles of the Ostrava-Opava Operation and also witnessed a situation when a Soviet soldier intended to shoot dead her mother. Later she graduated from an economics school in Ostrava and went to work in a chemical plant.