Marie Selicharová

“Former director of Končenice school, Mr. Souček, once stopped me riding my bike to Sokolovec and said: ‚Look girl, you wrote to Koutek and Jednota, you can write well, they need journalists in in Jednota.‘ I was surprised and said: ‚Journalist? Me? Well I don’t know anything about it. How could I be a journalist?‘ ‚Well you should apply and see. If you are no good at it, you can seek a job elsewhere.‘ So I signed up, wrote my application, he even helped me with the formal side. I wrote it down and got to Jednota for a two-year trial period. If I am good at it, if I manage, I would stay. A former association deputy called me then (Czechoslovak association) Vlado Daněk, a photo editor of Jednota, after two years and told me: ‚We threw you in the river and you learnt to swim.‘ I asked what that means with my eyes wide open with surprise? Then I thought about it, a-ha, so that means I got the job. And I kept doing it for forty two years.”

“At school everyone spoke Czech. Since I attended an elementary school from the first to fourth grade, I heard no Croatian word. I remember my granny from my mother´s side could not speak a single work in Croatian, she understood but didn’t speak at all. For example when they came to town, it was kind of a Czech and a bit of Croatian. Only a little Croatian. My children learned Croatian in the street, we didn’t speak anything else but Czech at home with my husband. At my parents we also didn’t speak anything else but Czech. With my sister we could go to school in Dioš (neighbouring village), there was a Croatian school, only two kilometres to the school. But my father said: ‚No, you will go to school in Končenice, you go to the Czech school. No Croatian school, you are Czech, so you go to the Czech school.‘ So we used to walk five kilometres there and five back, we didn’t go to Dioš. But I didn’t feel it any burden, as there was no other way for me than walking those five kilometres to Končenice on foot. Later we rode bikes, my sister and I. But I didn’t want to go to Dioš, as I was no Croat and felt Czech.”