"I have such an unpleasant memory of when I joined, I don't know if it fits here or not, but I think it does for today. I don't know why there were so many Greek children, that there was an infant institution, in one infant institution there were Greek children in the Zlín region and a measles epidemic came. And previously measles was quite a serious disease, causing severe pneumonia or even damage to the heart. But our children, it went very well, there was no measles vaccination yet. And the Greek children, because they were not used to to the virus that was here, you were dying of pneumonia like mushrooms after the rain, it was terrible for me."
"I originally applied for a pharmacy school, because I was 17 years old when I was supposed to attend a university. I didn't know where. I wanted to study natural sciences, but that was because I liked Professor Vencovský as a teacher. And dad mine said to me: 'Please, I'll dig the deepest well and throw you there, because you don't know math at all, and that's all math there is. So you do three years, they'll make a lecturer of you and I'll dig the deepest well and throw you there.' And I was like, 'How come?' And my dad used to say: 'Look what I have to do.' And he, for example, had to paint a poster 'We have fulfilled the grain' and I said to him: 'Why on earth are you doing this?' And he said to me: 'Well, Veruska, for you.' I didn't understand it then."
"Unfortunately, I remember because... but understand, it was seen through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old girl. It didn't leave a good impression on me at all, because I saw a grandmother there who had a checkered scarf like my grandmother. She held a little rucksack and treated people in a unpleasant way. And on the other side they were, they were in a line like this, and on the other side across the road they were literally looting the little shanties. Not all of them, but some of them, so it wasn't a nice sight. It didn't leave a good impression on me."
Věra Hřibová was born on October 8, 1931 in Usť Čorná in Subcarpathian Rus. From 1935 she lived with her parents in Hartmanice in Poličsko. During the September mobilization, her father had to enlist back in Subcarpathian Rus, he returned home in February 1939. Around 1941, she experienced an epidemic of diphtheria and measles. In the years 1938–1944, she attended elementary school in Hartmanice and Bystré. She then went to the gymnasium in Litomyšl and in 1945 entered the gymnasium in Polička, where she graduated in 1949. She studied at the Faculty of Medicine of the Masaryk University in Brno. She met her future husband Vítězslav Hřib at the faculty and married him on August 29, 1951. In 1953, their son Vítězslav was born. In 1955, she successfully completed her studies and joined the Zlín hospital. Around 1956, a measles epidemic broke out in the Zlín region, which severely affected mainly Greek children. In 1958, she and her family moved to Polička and worked in the Polička hospital. The second son, Aleš, was born in 1959. From 1963, she worked in the district of Bystré and Svojanov. After retiring in 1995, she continued to practice the medical profession in the form of substitutes and assistance until 2015. In 2021, Věra Hřibová lived alternately with her younger son Aleš in Litomyšl, in the Nursing Home in Polička and in Březiny with Polička.
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!
