Júlia Ševčíková

"...My siblings didn't leave until 1969, that is, a year later, and I already knew that I would have a problem because they came to school. They simply mapped out the family situation and knew that I was interested in continuing my studies, so the director already warned me that I would probably not be able to continue studying. But there was such a thing that before the graduation there were such threats that 'you won't graduate because...' it was so insulting, humiliating when the students came to you because... For example, they came to my house personally, to my parents' house, even the academic week, we had one week before graduation to prepare for the graduation exams. And since they were actually at school and I wasn't with them, because they were with the principal, so I was quietly preparing, because no one was with me but them, the insidious thing was that they took their time and just when a person is the most vulnerable, they came during that academic week and came to me probably saying, 'You nobody dared to submit an application, that you know that you won't get anywhere?' and so on. That they simply treated the person very humiliatingly, so it threw me off a bit. Well, I graduated with honors. And that is touching, because the director came to me crying, she had tears in her eyes. Because they came to congratulate us awardees, the commission will come to tell you that you finished well, you are among the awardees. Only she came close enough to me so that the others wouldn't hear it, that they were stupid again and that I probably won't go to school anymore. So, even years later, I am so moved by the fact that, simply, to you, that is, me personally, totally changed your life, because I had completely different plans..."

But I left Liptovský Mikuláš for the High Tatras. And that was practically my second childhood, because there we all met so wounded. I was hurt by the system, because I couldn't achieve what I wanted, and then they were there, we had in that group, because we went on high-altitude tourism, so before night shift and after night shift I could fill in such walks and it was very good , so we had a bunch of all those wounded there, I would say. That the professors were thrown out of schools actually for these political reasons, because they allowed themselves to go to church and that was not possible, and also to teach the youth and explain about God, when according to the communists God did not exist (laughter). So I fell in with the Tatras, because we also had priests there, whose consent was taken away in the 1950s, and they worked as ordinary workers, and that also applied to the nurses, some of them were original, they had left the religious order, and that's where I met that friend of mine, with whom I did surgery in Liptovský Mikuláš, because she was also leaving for a religious order. But in the 1950s and 1970s, people left secretly. That she simply went to a religious order, but no one was allowed to know about it. Well, I lived so happily in those Tatras with all the disappointed people, but there was an excellent environment because we could also have Holy Mass in the open air, because they took the permission of those priests and no one found us in the forest. So it was such an original experience that no one would have today, especially young people, because you have no way of knowing about it.