Marie Jesenáková

* 1954

  • "We weren't happy about it. I just saw it as pointless, it would be better if we stayed like Czechoslovakia. My mother was unhappy that I would actually be across the border, but it was never so bad that it couldn't be to travel. We just needed a passport for that, or did they actually have different money than we did. Because we had Euros and they had Czech crowns, that's actually how it has been until now. But I didn't perceive it somehow. Something that couldn't be managed. Simply when it was like that, we split up. Anyway, we basically couldn't influence it again, so... Question: "In 1992, nationalism against the Czech minority actually grew, during the division of Czechoslovakia. Did it affect you in any way? Did they somehow let you know that you come from Moravia? I also somehow didn't notice it very much. I heard that, I don't know, it was once said that Czechs should not be in positions. I was the head physiotherapist at the time. But somehow it didn't touch me either. And rather people, who still expressed themselves in this way. Let's say we don't like Czechs and stuff. And so I said that I am the Czech and they told me that you are not Czech, you are Moravian. But I've never experienced someone attacking me because I'm from the Czech Republic."

  • "I'm part of it, that is, I was preparing for this event, so I started to think if it was right that I used the pioneer to get to school. Actually, maybe someone wouldn't use it and he just went to work somewhere for a shovel, but he wouldn't use it. So it's terribly difficult. But it's so... but it was just terrible because we didn't know what was going to happen, how it was going to continue. We felt this. But we lived alongside that, just like in the war. Children were born and it was a normal life. But it is definitely marked."

  • "And he actually supported my grandmother's brother in his studies, because he wanted to study medicine. And they didn't have the money for it, so my grandfather, despite the fact that they didn't have much money and thus had this one daughter, supported him in his studies. And he then, when he finished his studies, he started to pay him back. And my grandfather actually started building a house. So then they moved into that house. And there is an incident related to my grandmother's brother. So he graduated as a doctor and helped the partisans. And then it was said that someone had betrayed him, so he had already received a notice that the Germans were coming for him. But it was said that the partisans were also coming for him and he was afraid, so he injected air into his veins and died."

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    Bratislava, 24.01.2023

    (audio)
    délka: 52:18
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the 20th century
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One should never give up that there is always some chance that it can be better

Marie with her parents and brother Ludvík
Marie with her parents and brother Ludvík
zdroj: Witnesses archive

Marie Jesenáková was born on April 26, 1954 in Rožňov pod Radhoštem in Moravia. She spent her childhood and youth with her parents and brother in Rožňov or during the holidays with her grandparents in Ostrava. She graduated from primary and secondary school in the 1960s. She always liked children, that‘s why she joined a pioneering organization where she took care of the younger generations. She wanted to continue studying at university and study pedagogy, but the witnesses father was considered politically unreliable. After 1968, he was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia because he disagreed with the entry of Warsaw Pact troops. Marie decided on additional studies focused on health rehabilitation in Olomouc, which she completed between 1973 and 1975. In 1978, she met her husband of Slovak origin and moved with him to Bratislava, Slovakia, the same year. For the first few years, she devoted herself to raising three children, and in 1983 she returned to work and took a job at the Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases on Partizánská Street in Bratislava. The Velvet revolution welcomed with her family actively in the squares, and she also participated in the „Ahoj, Európa!“ walk, which took place from Bratislava to the Austrian village of Heinburg an der Donau on December 10, 1989. TShe had a hard time perceiving the division of Czechoslovakia in 1993. However, in the end she discovered that the separation is not as insurmountable as she feared. Despite the fact that she was born in the Czech part of Czechoslovakia, she lived most of her life in the Slovak part, speaks fluent Slovak and feels like a Czechoslovak.