Věra Cinková

“It was very difficult for teachers. I had to be prepared for teaching all three classes at once and had to take turns with all three within one class. I had to prepare individual assignments for all of them. Once I had instructed them about the day’s topic, I gave them individual assignments and went to teach the next class. In effect, I had to teach three years of study at once within one class. That made preparing for classes really hard.”

“My husband was much worse off. He had graduated from Masaryk University in Brno with honours, with a red diploma. But since he was religious, as they used to say back then, he didn’t get a job adequate for his qualification; instead, he got a job in primary school in Červená Voda. He was quite sad about it. We only met four years later. He taught here until 1964 and then he got a job at the grammar school in Králíky, which was somewhat better, but he still had many hours to work in primary school. In 1968, he eventually got a job in Kostelec nad Orlicí, fifty kilometres away. So, he would commute daily – he worked there some thirty-five years. It was a grammar school, then another high school, and finally a business academy.”

“I want to tell the younger generations: love each other, love your family and parents, your neighbours and your country, because I think everyone should love their country. And, where you live, help wherever you can and do something to benefit others – not just for yourselves but for others as well.”

“I guess our childhood was happy, because even though we were very little and four of us were born only a year apart, we weren’t severely short on anything although our parents were poor. I’d say we were a quite poor family because mum couldn’t work anywhere and dad as a tailor was earning very little. So, we didn’t have much – I don’t remember ever having a doll; not at all. Only my younger sister had a pram and a doll in about 1950. The four of us would play together. We made playing cards out of sketch paper – painted and wrote numerals on them – and we played the cards. But we spent most of the time outdoors; we went out whenever we could and played various games: hide and seek, chasing, and so on. I think my childhood was fine. Our parents didn’t have much time to spend with us, but they would still find some. We never suffered from a lack of their attention or so.”