Bonavita - Margita Brajerová
* 1932
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“They also came saying that this or that man visited us. And we had to record every visit. There was a book at the gatehouse and every visit was recorded. Identity card number, name, to whom they went, who it was, everything had to be written down. And if, for example, somebody had come in the evening, the StB would come in the morning saying that this person was with us. We had guardian angels as well. They reported everything.”
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“I came home and Sister Superior told me we were going to the interrogation. There were two or three secret policemen. I can’t remember exactly. They were waiting for us. Three of us were taken back then: Sister Superior and the two of us. We got there around eight in the morning. I was there from eight to six in the evening. Then they asked questions. Then they took another one of us. And later they told us: 'We’ve already taken one to Košice, she’s already locked up. Confess!‘ I said, however, I had nothing to confess to."
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“They didn't want to give us the habit anymore. Because in those years, they also admitted priests and so on. So the provincial Sister Superior called us, saying: 'My children, go home as we don’t know what will happen to us. Whether they’ll take us to Siberia or who knows where. When the situation changes, when it’s better, you will come back.' We, however, begged her, we begged very much. Then they decided to give us the habit after all.” (Turned them into novices.)
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Full recordings
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Vrícko - charitný dom, 05.07.2019
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We caused uproar simply by our existence
Sister Bonavita was born as Margita Brajerová, and comes from the village Letanovce from among 9 children. She grew up in a small farmer family environment. After finishing primary school in Letanovce, she continued her secondary school studies in Spišská Nová Ves. She witnessed many local war events in her childhood. After graduating from secondary school, she completed a two-year study at the Business School in Spišská Nová Ves, during which she finally decided on spiritual direction and started her novitiate in the Order of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer. She received the habit secretly in 1950 in Levoča, and was soon sent to the hospital in Rožňava, just before the state intervention against female orders. She completed nursing school and until 1960 worked as a nurse in Rožňava. In 1957 she was summoned to be interrogated in connection with a fabricated suspicion of seditious activity. In 1960 she was sent to the concentration convent in the village of Číž, where she worked in agriculture. Since 1962 she worked at the Social Care Institution in Straník near Žilina. In 1971 she was moved to the newly established charity nunnery of the Sisters of the Divine Redeemer in Hronský Beňadik, where she worked in administration and took care of older nuns. During the whole period of communism she was kept in isolation from the outside world together with other sisters. In 1990 she reached retirement age and was moved to a charity house in Vrícko, where she still lives today.
