Angelina Čmolová

“Q: When did you first meet with your mum and dad after you were deported?] That was for the first time since 48, in 62. My husband didn’t go, and all I remember is that I flew there for three weeks. And that only dad came or drove to pick me up. [Q: Where?] To Tirana. [Q: Can you describe the first meeting, when you saw him at the airport?] I’ll tell you, that’s the tragedy, the tragedy of our upbringing in children’s homes. I was terribly embarrassed to have a priest for a dad, that wasn’t fashionable, if I’d said that in the children’s homes – because we were only brought up there in an atheistic, Communist manner – and do you know what it would be like if I said I was the daughter of a priest? But why am I saying this, as far as Dad goes, I denied that I came from this family, from such a family, no one knew about it. I didn’t tell that my dad was a priest until I was an adult. Even in my CVs I’d write that I was from an agricultural family.”

“[Q: Do you have any specific memory from the transport? Did part with your family in some very emotional way? You were eight years old?] Not even that, seven and a half. [Q: What did they tell you?] I don’t remember that, but I’m sure they told both our parents and us that we would come back soon. That they wanted us to be safe, and I have terrible memories of that journey. After three or four days... there was some food in the little bundle we had with us, but I remember there were some partisans with us, they were even hungrier than we were, so even the little we had, they... we didn’t give it to them, they took it. I guess they were hungrier than us, or they thought that we would get some food soon whereas they wouldn’t. And it was awful for us also because I got a double middle ear infection, and all that I remember from the journey was how we hid and how I kept crying and crying and crying. And we mostly travelled in the night, so we wouldn’t be seen, because they used bombs, the royal army, if it was them, it might have been the British, who came to their help. So I don’t know who bombed us, but someone did, and I remember we only travelled in the dark. [Q: You stayed hidden in the day?] We were hidden somewhere or slept somewhere in the day. The journey was terrible because I fell ill. [Q: Didn’t you have penicilin?] We didn’t have penicilin, we didn’t have a doctor, my eardrums ruptured. Even today, one of them is scarred and the other is ruptured.”