Marie Tykalová

“These were poor Jews. They often complained to my mum. I also used to bring them food. You see, these are things I don’t recall very often but once reminded, I remember them. The Jewish woman told my mum that the Jews who knew that they had money to flee, sew little pockets into their coats. And there they had money or gold. Mostly gold. The Jewish woman said, ‘You see, they know how poor I am and they won’t give me anything.’”

“She didn’t say it only because she thought she couldn’t take it any longer, then she thought to herself: ‘What would happen to my Mařenka?’ So she said: ‘No, I sew it myself, I sew it all by myself.’ She was imprisoned. But she survived, and she came back.”

“You know, I am ashamed that I was so stupid. But this is how I was raised. There were many good communists around me who helped. And when someone very clever said that… I can’t now, I am thrown off my balance. You see, it is no easy to remember it, when all your ideals fall down. I thought the communists would serve as models for people, namely that they would raise the children well, that they will teach them to hold together.”

“I was baptised. But when I started attending the technical secondary school — or when was this — we had to leave the church. But I still believed. So I asked, ‘My God, forgive me, but they would kick me out of the school and my father is so particular about me attending the school.’”

“So we lived in Radlice, and actually, [I didn’t have a good relationship with my mother - ed.]... Look, I don’t hold it against her, because my father was great. Mum was first and foremost a CPC functionary. You see, the part was something completely different during the First Republic. I don’t exactly know why it is that when an idea becomes a state ideology, it loses almost all of its ideals. And the Communist Party managed that terrifically.”