Marie Fifková

"What can I tell you, I'm going to move a little further in time. I remember when the borders between fields started to be broken up. I remember that. There were some rich farmers here in the village, for example my mother used to go work on some farmer’s field. It is really true that the farmers would lie on their fields in the furrows and wouldn’t want to let those tractors plow them and create those big units. It was terrible when they took the cows and horses from those people, when they took it all away from them. I have hazy memories of it, but it was such an unpleasant event in the village, terrible, and when you saw the people crying, because they didn't want to give it away, the animalism, for example."

"In seventh grade, it was already necessary to decide what schools you would apply to after eighth grade. And because I always had excellent grades throughout my studies, I signed up (we could sign up for two schools at the time) for a school of economics and for a medical school. I chose the school of economics because it was in Hodonín and I would not burden my parents financially. That was the main reason. Otherwise, I would enjoy the financing side of things, invoicing, things like that; later on in life, when I was doing these things, I also enjoyed them. But it was mainly because I wanted to be in Hodonín and go to school here and not burden my parents. Unfortunately. I wrote down these two schools and my parents received a letter saying that I could not be admitted to the school of economics in Hodonín, because my mother was not a member of the Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD). Do you know what that meant to me at the age of thirteen? After all, I, a girl with straight As - and they wouldn't have me? In addition, a classmate, who used to get Cs, got accepted. Alena Urbanová. Her father was a worker at the Regional National Committee. I took it terribly as a child. It was very difficult. Because I saw that she was a much worse student, but she could go and study economics - and I couldn’t with straight A's. Unfortunately, my mother quickly entered the Unified Agricultural Cooperative so that they would take me. It was terrible. And they said it was too late, it didn’t count.”