Marie Wollnerová

“We lived in the kitchen and one room without running water, without a toilet. We had to walk eleven stairs to go to the toilet and tap water was only in the hallway. We used to go there with a watering can. So this is how we lived. We were poor but I wasn’t hungry. Still, I remember my grandma bringing over a loaf of bread, scraping the flour off so that she could make a roux. Also, there was a ration of 0.5 liters of milk per week. For this reason my mummy went to work in a dairy. It was a private dairy at Arbesovo náměstí. She distributed milk among households, also to German women. They had a purple stamp on the lid, meaning it was whole milk. Us regular people had skimmed milk. But my mum swapped the bottles and I had to wait her somewhere in the house before leaving for school. It was severe frost then. She forced me to drink the cream up. It was icy, I didn’t want to drink it but she slapped me and said: ‘Drink it up, it’s healthy!’”

“At first, I liked it. I liked the idea that there would be no rich and poor people and everyone would do the same. But then, with age, I came to see those careerists climbing up the ladder. You know, they informed against each other, writing anonymous letters. I witnessed all of it. I was adult by then and obviously didn’t like that.”