Zora Sigalová

“There is a special school in Končenice, they have a single Czech class from the fifth until the eighth (in Croatia elementary school has only eight grades) and one Czech class from the fifth until the eighth Croatian. I taught one or the other, one lesson in Czech and the other in Croatian, the same material. Therefore I used to say: In Končenice brotherhood and unity always ruled. There was no arguing. And there were Orthodox (Orthodox Serbs), there were Croats, people from Zagorje (region bordering Slovinia) – that is Stražanac and Dioš (smaller villages belonging under Končenice) – and Czechs - Končenice, Otkopi and Brestov (Daruvarski Brestovac, also belong under Končenice). But there was no arguing amongst them. And there were no obstacles, as Croatian children next to Czech ones learnt some Czech. So one confused me in Zagreb, I think he went to learn craft there, he was called Marijan. That was many years ago. Along with four other boys they were friends. He was suddenly coming along, we met and he told me: ‚Good day, comrade.‘ They sometimes used to say it. I replied: ‚Good day. How are you?‘ I was thinking: Dear god, did he actually attend Czech school or not? Well he went to Croatian and wanted to show off in front of the boys how he speaks Czech. And I was pleased, it was cute. That was before (earlier). About thirty years ago.”

“As the civil war (in Yugoslavia) began, as they say, so Czechoslovakia, back then it was still one country, invited us, to come as guests, not refugees, but guests to Bohemia. Suddenly on 7th September it arrived, that we can go and on the 13th they already came for us. To get away from the grenades, of course we went, we were not dumb. There was a parents meeting and now: ‚Who from the teachers comes?‘ And the parents at me: ‚Comrade, you should go, children like you, we do too, we will be safer if you go.‘ Well all right, I said I would go. And they told me off at home: ‚It is none of your business, you don’t care what happens with us here!‘ We went to Seč and stayed for four and a half months. And when the children asked me when we would come back, I replied: ‚In a fortnight.‘ Two weeks passed by and I said again: ‚In a fortnight.‘ Then there were Czech teachers, who taught physical education to kids, but only that, the rest was up to us to teach in Czech. I had a class in the pavilion D and I called it a wooden-glass castle, in fact it was a montage hall. I was a teacher, mum, dad, aunt, barber, cleaner, everything. I had to play all those roles. And I was all by myself with kids from five to eighteen years of age. But they obeyed me, all of them, but not my colleague. But when I told them on Sunday: ‚So now you dress up nicely, lock you rooms and we shall go for a walk.‘ We set off at three o´clock in the afternoon, or at two, as it was winter, walked around the whole town of Seč, we found out there was a small hydro power plant, there were also other camps and returned back at half past six and they were not at all naughty. And they said to my colleague: ‚Nah, we will not go.‘ They simply had to listen to me. But it was not nice... In my pavilion no crying ever occurred as they did in other places. There was war here, but I didn’t allow them – when the phone rang, I had to pick it up first. And when they informed me something bad happened, no, no. I didn’t say it. Not to the child. As its psyche would get damaged. They left so that their soul stayed healthy. And then my colleagues told me: ‚What if you stay until Easter?‘ So I turned it round and told the children: ‚We leave in a month. Then it was beginning to get a bit silent, sometimes around 21st January, 1992 we were acknowledged (Croatian independent state announced on 15th January, 1992). And I said: ‚On the second school term we go home.‘ And everyone said: ‚Our teacher knew it. Then we returned, but there was yet a lot of action going on... I remember the grenades still falling.”