Štefanie Táborská

“This man came along from Timișoara, looking for girls to come serve. The Hrůza family had an uncle – then it was the mountains [work in the mines] – and he took the miners. He brought that man, looking for a girl to look after his little boy at home. He brought him home to us. Here in Moldova I got 150 lei, that man gave me 50 more, so my mother sent me all the way to Timișoara. You can’t imagine how much I cried there.”

“When I was fourteen, my parents had no money. They tilled and worked on the field with the cows. How much milk could a cow like that give after tilling the whole day. But what our mum had, two or three eggs, a little cream, milk, she put it in a bag and went to Moldova Nouă to sell it. It wouldn’t buy a kilo of sugar, perhaps a quarter or half a kilo […]” – “And she walked all the way to Moldova?” – “She walked. And there she found a woman with a small child. Back then there weren’t creches or kindergartens, so they took the girls from Svatá Helena. They trusted these were Czechs who didn’t steal, so they took us to look after their children.”