Emilie Kuzněcov, roz. Maková

“From Kocanda I was going to Moldava to school. I was a little girl, and my brother was carrying me to school on his back. I didn’t want to go to school. At home they would always make me wear a red sweater, a red beret, and a black skirt, and as soon as I came to school, the children would always start laughing at me: ´Red as a poppy, red as a poppy.´ (a pun on her surname – transl.’s note). I was sitting there and crying and the teachers were wondering what was wrong with the beret. I didn’t want to go to school anymore, and I threw the red beret away; I didn’t want it anymore.”

“My parents took the horses to the farm to work, and during those three days we needed to do the horses' work. I was a little girl and they sent me to hoe a peanut field belonging to the Prošek family. I was working with my hoe, following the straight lines just as the other workers. [Kuročenko: That was at the time when the Prošek’s were already rich.] Otherwise they would not pay me for that part of the field. They tried to cheat on me, anyway: ´Milenka, just walk slowly...´ Boženka from the Prošek family was telling me to work slowly. I was drenched in sweat, and I didn’t want to stay behind; then they wouldn’t pay me for the work I had done. She was cheating me: ´You don’t have to hurry so much.´ They gave us lunch, too. Plum dumplings. [Kuročenko: With sauce?] Even with cream, with thick cream.”

“I was willing to go to Czechoslovakia. They didn’t let me go. If I had not been married... That was a mistake. I could have gone. [Kuročenko: You would have gone, but he would not have.] They would not let him. [Kuročenko: No, they would not.] And what about the child? Would it leave with no father? [Kuročenko: But there were women who did it.] Da. [Kuročenko: They did not look at it and they went.] Life would have been different there.”

“My granddaughter and her husband were told that one could earn good money in the Czech Republic. And what do they do? They go there to earn some money. They arrived in the Czech Republic, and she was a given a job – working alongside a surgeon during operations. [Kuročenko: As a nurse.] The one who has to clean everything. Nobody wants to do that kind of job there. They sent only people like her for that. The poor souls were working there, and they could not even come home for the holidays. They did not have money for that; they do not even earn that much. They spend what they earn there. And they have to pay there, too. [Kuročenko: For an apartment?] For the apartment where they live.”