Věra Kafková

“We all had to work in those fields! It wasn’t like we would come back from school and do whatever we wanted to. No, you go there, you go pick nettles for the geese, Grandma shooed us along, you go there and there, or join us in the field. So then we all had to work in the field. I was attending economy school at the time, for two years. In the morning, before leaving for the bus, which left at seven o’clock, at one point I’d go and feed the pigs. That’s how we had the work split up.”

“Then we also had a sister who had spent a year in Russia. Well, that was a pretty questionable matter, because Dad was a People’s Partyer [Christian Democrat - trans.], and suddenly his daughter goes off to study in Russia for a year! No one wanted to take her to the airport, a friend took her at the time, but then she came back and everything took a turn for the better somehow. But the situation was pretty tense when she first said she was going to study in Russia. But every experience of that kind is useful.”