How to pass a secondary school finals when you have a bad political profile
Jana Morozovičová, née Makešová, was born on 25 August 1941 in Prague; she has a twin sister, Eva, and a brother who is four years younger. Her father Oldřich Makeš had a degree in law, her mother Marta Makešová (née Kolenatá) was an office clerk. The family lived in Brno during the war because Oldřich Makeš had found distant Jewish relatives in the family tree and did not feel safe in Prague. In 1948 the family was hit hard by persecution because Jana‘s uncle Ervín Kolenatý was found to be in the anti-Communist resistance - he was given the death sentence in 1949. According to family memoirs, the punishment was softened to life imprisonment. His wife was also tried and received a sentence of nine years. The witness‘s father was immediately fired from his job, and the family found itself withotu means of sustenance. Jana and Eva were banned from studying, they could only train as bricklayers or crane operators. Through much effort, they finally managed to apply to and pass secondary school final exams (maturita). In the 1950s the witness married Kazimir Morozovič. Her whole life she worked at the Research Institute of Antibiotics in Roztoky near Prague, where she started off as a laboratory assistant and ended up as a researcher. She is the co-author of a patent connected to the production of penicillin.
