Josef Sorban

“Of course, I had a bad ‘cadre profile’, as it was called, because of my parents - even though I was a Pioneer, and I was even active in various Pioneer events. It didn’t help me much, although I had good results at school, which I can still prove, they barred me from going to grammar school - secondary comprehensive education school at the time, you weren’t allowed to call it grammar school. I could go to a vocational centre, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to attend grammar school because my ambition was to study at a university, which I was barred from doing because of my cadre profile, because my parents had a negative opinion of the regime. But then we moved to Bratislava, my step-father, who was a bit better off - and although not a Party member - had a great position at one company in Bratislava. So it was possible to work things out through him, and I did actually go to grammar school in the end.”

“As the youngest, we weren’t the best off, of course, because we were bullied by the older ones. The people there didn’t care for us much, as far as clothing is concerned, we only had old, worn clothes - that’s what they gave us. We had to walk to school, they only showed us the way once. I can’t really say now - I went to have look, it’s about a kilometre away from the children’s home - all I remember is that when school started, the children had snacks during break time, but we didn’t have anything. There was about six of us from the children’s home, we didn’t have anything to eat because we didn’t get any snack, of course, the food there wasn’t much. I remember from the children’s home that our canteen was out on the other side of the yard. The children’s home had a big garden with fruit trees, but those were off limits, of course, we weren’t allowed there. The headmistress, I don’t know her name, allowed me, as the only one, to go into the garden on a Sunday in September, when there was still fruit. That’s what I remember from back then.”