Marie Klusáčková

“They employed our fathers in the war industry, in factories. Dad was also in the English Home Guard, the militia. They served in the streets. To have some place for all of us Czechoslovaks to gather, they also organised a Czechoslovak Club there [in Newcastle - ed.]. We were even visited by President Edvard Beneš. Jan Masaryk also came to say hello to us, and other members of the government in exile. We children performed Czech dances and songs for them there. So that was the Czechoslovak Club.”

“My background report didn’t matter in the lower years. But then at grammar school, the old professors were gradually forced out. The only ones who remained were those who taught mathematics, physics, or chemistry, in other words, subjects that you couldn’t really stick ideology in much. And for history, Czech, and civic education they brought in new professors, Communists of course. We were given a young class teacher, hardly out of school, and he was a dreadful Communist. He saw my background report, he didn’t like me much, and he kept giving me various tasks, kept trying to get me involved. Then I graduated, and my parents were acquainted with the professors who had had to leave, and they told them that I wouldn’t receive recommendation to study at university. So I didn’t even apply, so I wouldn’t give them the joy of denying it... Then I undertook an undergraduate course, for a nurse, which I completed here in Brno.”