Marie Čovejová

“The worst part was that they gave some women cash for it at the time. Or for families where the social authorities saw that they didn't have washing machines - that they were washing the children's clothes by hand - they bought them a washing machine, and that was all. Indeed, this was happening. And there was an awful lot of it. It was very humiliating. They just took away our femininity, such an attack on the body. None of us, mainly Romani women, would ever do it if we had been instructed. It was so quick and arranged that the fear for our children prevailed, lest they get into children's homes. This is what they did to us, the worst thing they could. Just fear, which forced us to undergo this procedure."

"I also had a son, but now I don't because a tragedy happened in my life. He got sick, he had epilepsy, he was fifteen years old. And because he had frequent seizures, he died at sixteen, drowned in the water. It's very desolating for me, even though it's been fifteen years. So my only son left. I only have two daughters left. Then I didn't have any more children, nor could I, because when my son was born in the period when the government suggested that no Roma children be born. Social workers visited us and said that we would either undergo an operation they would perform on us, or they would take our children away from us to children's homes. That was also perhaps the worst turning point in my life."