Zora Sigalová

“My name is Zora Sigalová and I am a retired specialised teacher. My parents, Velimir Sigal and Blažena Horešovská, met in Prague, my mum was originally Czech born in Unhošť near Prague. There is still a house, the pub U Slovana that was a pub of my granddad. And my father studied in Prague, otherwise comes from Sarajevo, and his mum and dad were in Sarajevo, even aunt and uncle. They met in Nouzovo that is a trip place near Unhošť. Daddy was in Sokol, mum was too, and once they had a trip, and mum got a whole bouquet of flowers from him, and so they met. Then they were dating in Prague and in five years moved to Yugoslavia, where dad worked in the railways and our granddad worked in Sarajevo. But what I wanted to say: in the village of Tešanjka in the house, the first neighbour was 300 metres from us, another 500 metres, so we were quite secluded. Tešanjka was eleven kilometres away from Doboj and about fifteen from Teslič. We stayed there until the end of WW2. We were only little, so we played, didn’t bother by grenades flying over our house. And one day there were partisans, the other day ustaša and the third militia. We were really small and didn’t understand it all. And mother taught us Czech as children tell everything. So the rest was in Croatian. Daddy was in Croatia (during war), not in Bosnia. But I was born in Bosnia, so I was Bosnian Czech, at least they told me so during studies.”

“There is a special school in Končenice, they have a single Czech class from the fifth until the eighth (in Croatia elementary school has only eight grades) and one Czech class from the fifth until the eighth Croatian. I taught one or the other, one lesson in Czech and the other in Croatian, the same material. Therefore I used to say: In Končenice brotherhood and unity always ruled. There was no arguing. And there were Orthodox (Orthodox Serbs), there were Croats, people from Zagorje (region bordering Slovinia) – that is Stražanac and Dioš (smaller villages belonging under Končenice) – and Czechs - Končenice, Otkopi and Brestov (Daruvarski Brestovac, also belong under Končenice). But there was no arguing amongst them. And there were no obstacles, as Croatian children next to Czech ones learnt some Czech. So one confused me in Zagreb, I think he went to learn craft there, he was called Marijan. That was many years ago. Along with four other boys they were friends. He was suddenly coming along, we met and he told me: ‚Good day, comrade.‘ They sometimes used to say it. I replied: ‚Good day. How are you?‘ I was thinking: Dear god, did he actually attend Czech school or not? Well he went to Croatian and wanted to show off in front of the boys how he speaks Czech. And I was pleased, it was cute. That was before (earlier). About thirty years ago.”