Mgr. Rebeka Křižanová-Bartůňková

„Pak tam byla ještě jedna učitelka, která učila tělocvik a přírodopis, a ta také trvala na tom, že jí nesmíme říkat ,soudružko´. A to z dnešního pohledu neprošlo na každé škole, to nebylo, že by si učitel dovolil říct před třídou plnou žáků, o kterých neví, z jakých rodin jsou. Takže to byla taková moje vzpomínka na školu. Pak jsme měli výbornou třídní, která učila ruštinu, ale také to byla velmi slušná ženská. Bylo tam těch učitelů víc, kteří nebyli ve straně. Nějak jsme to o nich jakoby věděli, protože to dávali najevo, třeba mi řekla: ,Ty seš z takový rodiny, tobě já můžu věřit.´ Dokonce jedna mladá učitelka se mě ptala, jestli doma nemáme Bibli, že by si jí chtěla půjčit. Já jsem to říkala rodičům a také je zvláštní, že už jsem jako dítě věděla, že to je něco v nepořádku, že se na mě rodiče budou zlobit. To je také zvláštní, přitom mi nikdo neřekl: ,Bible se nepůjčuje, Bible je něco, co se nesmí,´ nebo co tady prostě není v souladu s oficiální linií a překvapilo mě, že máma řekla: ,Tak jo, tak jí to prostě půjč.´ A já jsem tedy tady té paní učitelce Petroušové nesla tu Bibli a ona ještě řekla: ,Opatrně, aby to nikdo neviděl,´ a takhle si to přendavala z mojí tašky do aktovky, do nějaké tašky, a říkala: ,Neboj se.´ A pak mi to zase za měsíc nebo za jakou dobu vrátila, že moc děkuje." "Then there was another teacher who taught PE and science, and she also insisted that we not call her 'comrade'. And that, from today's point of view, didn't pass in every school, it wasn't that the teacher dared to say it in front of a class full of pupils they didn't know what kind of families they were from. So that was kind of my memory of school. Then we had an excellent class teacher who taught Russian, but she was also a very decent woman. There were more of those teachers who were not in the party. Somehow we sort of knew about them because they showed it, for example she said to me, `You are from such a family, I can trust you.` Even one young teacher asked me if we had a Bible at home, that she wanted to borrow it. I told my parents, and it's also strange that even as a child I knew something was wrong, that my parents would be angry with me. That's also strange, but nobody said to me, 'You don't lend a Bible, a Bible is something you're not allowed to do,' or that's just not in line with the official line here, and I was surprised that my mom said, 'Okay, just lend it to her. ' And so I brought the Bible to the teacher here, Mrs. Petroušová, and she said, 'Be careful that nobody sees it,' and she moved it from my bag to her briefcase, to some bag, and she said, 'Don't worry,' and then she gave it back to me a month or so later, and she said thank you very much."

I want to say that my grandmother was thirty-two years old, she had three boys, one of them was my father - the middle one. My grandfather was four years older, so about thirty-six. And then the whole family lived with the stigma of a family not only of a traitor and a class enemy, but also of a murderer. So, of course, this was very widely disseminated and the propaganda worked with it. Because my grandmother moved away, had to move away from Valmez, she returned to her parents in the village of Branky, which is a village about six kilometers from Valmez in the direction of Bystřice pod Hostýnem. There she lived with her parents, who helped her with the children, and there were about three families in the village who were not afraid or helped them. But otherwise, in fact, all those people turned away from them because they were terribly afraid, or maybe some of them even agreed to it. Of course, there were also convinced communists there, and so they lived there as if excommunicated on the margins, because what was really happening was that these people were crossing over to the other sidewalk, spitting. Like, I remember my dad telling me this thing once, that he remembers a teacher calling him up to the podium at school and saying, `Well, look, kids, this is the son of a murderer and don't talk to him and watch out for him,' so that's basically what they grew up with."