After the family butcher´s shop was nationalized, we worried about Dad
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Marie Garajová, née Strejčková, was born on 31 July 1931 to Marie and Ladislav Strejček in Jehnice near Brno, the younger of two children. Her father came from Letovice, where he trained as a butcher, her mother from Svitávka. They built a house in Jehnice, where her father opened a butcher´s shop before the war, her mother helped him with sale. In 1937, Marie started to attend the primary school, then she moved to the upper primary school. After the war she completed a one-year course, called JUK, then the school for women’s professions Vesna in Brno-Řečkovice. Jehnice was not affected much by war events. Only at the end of the war the inhabitants witnessed the bombing of nearby Brno. The family stayed for two months in the village of Drásov near Tišnov until Jehnice was liberated by Romanian soldiers in 1945. The communists nationalized father’s business in the 1950s. The currency reform meant another hard blow for the family. After finishing her studies, Marie joined a research institute in Brno. At a dance course, she met her future husband, Václav Garaj, who was studying at the construction secondary technical school, and they got married in 1950. They had three children, and in 1956 they moved from Jehnice to Uherský Brod. In 1960 she joined the local Zbrojovka factory, where she worked until her retirement. In 2022, at the time of recording, she was living in Uherský Brod.
