I still have the sound of sirens in my ears
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Miluše Babjaková was born on May 29, 1941 in Prague. The parents, mother Olga Retzmanová and father Jozef Kratochvíl, came from other Czech cities, but went to Prague for work and studies, where they met. During the Second World War, the family lived in Prague’s Vinohrady, where they witnessed the bombing that took place near where they lived. Miluše spent her childhood and school years alternately in Prague and in the border town of Česká Lipa, where they moved for several years because of her father’s work. In 1950, they went back to Prague, where she finished elementary school after the socialist coup. In 1955, she entered the secondary higher economic school in Mladá Boleslav, where she commuted every day by bus. After graduation in the spring of 1959, Miluše met her future husband, Vojtech Babjak, who was from Košice. She fell in love and moved with him to Košice in July of the same year, where she got married and lives there to this day. In Košice, she worked in the accounting department of a military hospital until 1963, when the couple had a daughter, Erika. Miluše and her sister often visited their maternal aunts, who were displaced to West Germany after World War II because of their German origins. On August 30, 1968, Miluša’s son Vojtech was born. After a short maternity leave, she started working again at the railway, where she worked her way up to the position of economic deputy. After the change of regime and the disintegration of Czechoslovakia in 1993, she experienced certain manifestations of hostility of the Slovaks towards the Czechs who remained living in Slovakia. Miluše retired in 1995, but she worked at the railway hospital in Košice for another five years. At the time of documentation, as a retired person, she enjoys the presence of her family and is actively involved in the management and activities of the social club of the Czech Society in Košice.
