"And since my in-laws came from Vienna, my husband had relatives there, and we went there. It was there that we read or heard that our country had been attacked on 21 August, and it was with no sugar-coating - it was an invasion, just full-on. I remember walking the Marienstraße in Vienna, and there were signs saying: 'We'll secure your way...', 'We'll get you Czechs to Australia, to Canada, to the United States', you know - 'if you are here, do not go back home.'"
"We had to perform certain duties; we had to visit the families of less gifted children, assist or prefer the officials' children - no matter how stupid they were, but since their dad was a party secretary, the kid could not get a D grade in school and so on. There were pressures on the school as well. I taught history, and they made sure that I would emphasise that it was the Soviet army who liberated us."
Stanislava Zenklová was born in Mnichovice near Prague on 7 November 1935. Her childhood memories include the blackouts and food shortages during the Second World War and the arrival of the Red Army in Mnichovice. From an early age she wanted to be a teacher. She graduated from a Faculty of Education. First she was assigned to Ústí nad Labem, then she worked in Mnichovice for forty years, and then in nearby Strančice for ten years. Her husband was the nephew of Petr Zenkl, a National Socialist politician and later a representative of the Czechoslovak exile. She spent the invasion into Czechoslovakia in August 1968 in Vienna. She endured the subsequent normalisation purges at work, but her husband lost his job. She describes the ideological indoctrination of the socialist education sector. In November 1989 she participated in demonstrations in Prague. She lived in Mnichovice in 2018.
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!
