My parents didn’t join the JZD (Unified Agricultural Cooperative), so I had to leave school in the second year.
Download image
Elena Kadlecová, née Melničaková, was born on 31 October 1940 in eastern Slovakia into a Ruthenian family. She grew up in the village of Maškovce (Humenné district), where her parents had a farm. During the Second World War, she and her family had to hide in the surrounding forests for some time. Towards the end of the war, her family was captured by the German army returning from the eastern front. Together with other families they marched to Sol near Prešov. There, at her father’s request, they were released. After the communist takeover, her parents refused to join the Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD). From 1956 she studied at the Secondary Medical School in Prešov, from where she had to leave after a year - as a daughter of kulaks she had to pay for her education and her parents did not have enough money for it. In 1958 she entered the Air Force Ground Specialist School in Žamberk. Then she worked as a teletype operator. At the beginning of the sixties she moved to Prague. Between 1972-1975 she was a member of the National Security Corps (SNB). Later she worked as an operator at the Scientific, Technical and Economic Information Centre and then at the Czech National Bank. In 2021 she lived in Chodov, Prague.
