Every time I was told that one has to endure everything
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Magda Konvalinová, née Bláhová, was born on July 18th 1957 in Pacov. Both her parents came from families of farmers, her father was born on a farm in Lhota near Písek and her mother in Horní Světlá near Pacov. After they got married, they had been serving as seasonal labourers on both farms, so as a child, Magda Konvalinová had been moving frequently. She started elementary school in 1963 in Tábor, then applying for a school of agriculture where she wasn’t admitted despite her excellent study results. She couldn’t understand that, as well as why she had been bullied by some of the teachers at the elementary school. At the age of seventeen, she found at least, under quite unpleasant a humiliating circumstances, that her father had been in prison. At the same time, she also learned quite a new word: ‘kulak’. Her parents, probably fearing the consequences, kept refusing to give her the explanation. Due to that, she had been feeling guilty of something she didn’t do and she couldn’t even identify for the greater part of her childhood and early adulthood. As late as after 1989, she found documents regarding her father’s imprisonment in the early 50s while going through her late grandmother’s estate. After that, she started to make some connections. According to her father’s investigation files from the Security Services Archive he had been creating and distributing leaflets mocking the Communist regime. However, due to her grandmother’s testimony, these materials had been planted on him in order to harm the Bláha family which had been refusing to join the agricultural coop. Despite that, they had been resisting the pressure till 1963, willingly facing all the consequences. In 1990, Magda Konvalinová got back all the fields and buildings her family had been dispossessed of, she returned to the farm and begun its reconstruction.
