We had good times in Mušov, apart from the mosquitoes
Download image
Bernadeta Fourová was born on 11 December 1933 in Líšeň, a village on the periphery of Brno. Her father Josef Jeřábek was active in World War I, first in the Austro-Hungarian army, then in 1918 he was captured by the Italians, where he joined the Czechoslovak legions and took part e.g. in the Battle of Piave River. Bernadeta Fourová spent her childhood in Líšeň with her father, mother, and four siblings. The family remained there until the end of World War II. When the war was over, her seventeen-year-old brother Jan wanted to set off to the border regions and take up farming, but his application was denied because he was not of age. The family thus decided that they would all leave Líšeň and move to the border region together. The Jeřábeks moved to Mušov. To begin with, Bernadeta Fourová did not spend much time there, as she had three more years of school to complete in Přerov, and she merely visited her parents there. In the autumn of 1948, her brother Josef decided to cross the borders, and he took his brother Oldřich with him. They both stayed abroad, Josef in the USA and Oldřich in Australia. After completing her primary school, Bernadeta Fourová lived with her parents in Mušov; upon marrying she moved to Horní Slavkov for three years. After her return she worked first in Brno and then in Mikulov. Like everyone else in the neighbourhood, from the early 1960s she anxiously watched the developing plans for the construction of the Novomlýnské (New Mill) Reservoirs, which counted with the flooding of Mušov. When the village was definitively designated for destruction, her family was forced to find a new home; after much searching it was decided to build a house in Březí, not far from Mikulov, where Bernadeta Fourová lives with her family to this day.
