Eržika Sojková

* 1949

  • „ I mainly remember that down below, below us, was the Mrakšov farm and next to it was a huge pond. And I had no idea at the time that the pond actually belonged to Slupečná. And then, before the dam began to fill, I remember that my mother and I walked around that pond, but on the other side across the Vltava, and there was a swinging bridge over the river. But the river - it was a bigger stream. Today, when I think about it in retrospect, when I look below the dam, then I go along the river to somewhere near Vyšší Brod, so it really is a bigger stream. But there was a footbridge across that stream... across from it, u Nováčků it was called​​, there was 'Konzum' written in big letters and that's where we used to go shopping. And every time we walked over that footbridge, my mother used to wear those wide skirts, when we didn't walk evenly, the footbridge swayed and we grabbed the skirt and didn't want to let go.“

  • „ All of a sudden the estates closed everything, they let us all go and where... So right before the [iron] curtain we said to ourselves: 'We have to make some money.' So we started building a stable. A stable, a warehouse and a kind of kitchen where the killings took place etc. We got it under the roof, and suddenly everything was different. The landowners could not sell cattle, the bulls were overgrown, fat, simply no one wanted them, no one bought them. So we thought, 'What now?' And so we remembered those East Germans. And instead of a stable and a hayloft, we borrowed money. It was only half a million. We built it and turned it into a guest house. But there weren't that many guests and we didn't have the repayments. So I had to, willy-nilly, work illegally in Austria. And it was always on the border [with a strong German accent]: 'And where are you going?' But I can say that it was a difficult period because it was simply impossible to get a work permit at that time. So I stuck with one family, she was a doctor and he was an engineer, and I was with the children. I went three days a week, and that's how we managed to pay off the debt.“

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Horní Planá, 29.06.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:14:51
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I just go out and nobody stops me at the border

Eržika Sojková in 1967
Eržika Sojková in 1967
zdroj: witness’s archive

Eržika Sojková, born Jarošová, was born on February 16, 1949 in the now defunct settlement of Svatý Prokop near Lipno nad Vltavou. Her parents came to Czechoslovakia as Slovak re-emigrants from the Romanian village of Bodonoš in 1947. Her father worked on the construction of the Lipno dam, and the family eventually settled in the village of Slupečná, originally inhabited by Germans. In 1967, Eržika Sojková graduated from secondary school in Kaplice. In the same year, her older sister Hana left and went after her partner in Austria, whom Eržika visited in the summer of the following year. Austria thus experienced the invasion of Warsaw Pact troops. However, she returned to Czechoslovakia due to concerns about her parents. Shortly thereafter, she met her future husband. In the 1970s, Slupečná housed vacationers from the German Democratic Republic (GDR), in the 1990s she started a business in tourism, and briefly worked in Austria. For her, the fall of communism meant, on the one hand, the desired freedom of movement, and on the other hand, economic uncertainty due to the destruction of state estates and local factories. In 2021, Eržika Sojková lived in Slupečná.