“At that time, I already lived where I live now, and I worked there as a teacher. The time of the invasion was also the time of the summer school holidays. But afterward, I had to start working. I used to take my son to my parents, they lived near the Cathedral on Rudnay Square. I used to take him there by bicycle. I don’t even know now why I rode the bike. I guess the trams were out of service; I don’t remember anymore. But I do remember passing around those tanks on my way. I felt sorry for those boys. They were children. They stared blankly with no idea where they were.
'Didn´t you talk to them? Didn’t you try?'
We tried talking to them, but we couldn’t understand each other. We used to go to this dockyard near Tatran. And some of those boys tried speaking with them. They spoke Russian, but I think those soldiers were from the other republics, not from Russia. The young soldiers were not even sure where they were. They were almost not fed, always hungry. It was pitiful. I am telling you they were kids; they were young boys.”
“They later moved in with us. My parents showed them into the kitchen, where there was some spare space, and they gave them some hay to sleep on. In the beginning, they stayed there, but then, this peculiar thing happened. We were only children. And that kitchen opened to other rooms. We were all sleeping in one of the rooms on rather large beds. Once, those Russians opened the door and saw us sleeping there, in our pajamas and covered with duvets and everything. Their superior started to rant and rave: 'So you, the burgeois, sleeping in their beds, and us, the liberators, sleeping in the hay!' So my dad opened the door wide for them to see and told him: 'Look at these bourgeois.' And there were five of us there, looking from under those duvets. He softened immediately and started to play with us. So that´s what they were like. Like small children. “
“One more thing. I just recalled. We had this huge garden and a town house, sort of. And they were planning to place an anti-tank gun in our garden. I remember my father telling them: 'For heaven´s sake, we have five children living here!' We were five siblings. And the youngest one was born in 1944, he was only a baby. And my father, he talked the German out of it, he talked that horrible arrogant SS officer out of placing it there.”
Milica Drgoňová, née Čárska, was born September 10, 1937, in Bratislava. Milica has four siblings and comes from a family of an eminent Slovak surgeon Konštantín Čársky. Her mother, Ľudmila Čárska, née Kostlivá, Czech by origin, was born to a family of a renowned professor and surgeon Stanislav Kostlivý. That way, Milica was raised in the ideals of respect towards freedom and democracy in Czechoslovakia. Following the creation of the Slovak State and with the later threat of the front coming closer, the family settled in Gbely where Milica witnessed numerous local war events. After the war, she continued her studies, and in 1955, she graduated from secondary school in Rača, Bratislava. Later, she completed her degree in Slovak and Russian Language at Comenius University in Bratislava. In 1958, she started her career as a teacher at Bratislava Business Academy on Palisády Street and got married. She and her husband had three children. Little by little, Milica started to notice the ideological pressure on the teaching methods and curriculum amongst the teaching staff. It only grew stronger after the Warsaw Pact Invasion in 1968 and during the normalization period. Milica´s father was forcefully pensioned off due to the political pressures. Milica and her friends from the intellectual circles supported the dissident movement in Czechoslovakia, primarily the members and architects of Charter 77. As the Velvet Revolution began, not only she felt the strong enthusiasm of people but also the rising voices of radical nationalism. This ran contrary to her democratic principles and the spirit of the Czechoslovakism. As of today, Milica Drgoňová is retired, living in Bratislava.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
