Marie Mannová

“The school ended, I passed my final exams with flying colours and before it in March, we had applied to continue in the ninth grade and then to continue at an eleven-year school which had been established in Městec. So, I applied in March. Then the exams took place, and I was said I had not been included in the ninth grade and that I had not been chosen. The current principal was surprised because he had all the applicants confirmed by the local national committee, including me, so all this time I thought that I would go to ninth grade, continue at the eleven-year school and then probably go to university. Because I wanted to... I did not care about the fact I did not like maths. Once I got a book about Mars for Christmas and that is why I said I wanted to be an astronomer. It was one of my wishes. Then we visited a circus, I loved the circus and there was a young girl, how old might have she been? Fifteen? She was practising on the trapeze, and I was so into it that I wanted to be an artist. And that I wanted to ride in a circus caravan, that I wanted to be an artist, and I pushed it so that if my father ever went to the pub for a beer, they were already welcoming him: 'Mr Berousek!' The Berouseks, that was a well-known name. Then I got over it. However, I really wanted to study, and my father wished for it very much. After it, when it ended up like this, I mean when I was admitted and then again not admitted, my father wrote an appeal to a school committee and the principal started to fight for me, so he succeeded, and they admitted me to the school. Of course, the principal was scolded because of it, and I was invited to go away with other students. We went to hops harvest somewhere near Žatec and my furious dad appeared there a week later and (told me) to pack up and that we were going home. I was wondering why we were going home. ‘You were not admitted to the school. They expelled you again.‘”

“On the one hand, my childhood was affected by the fact that my father - and I really appreciate his attitude - was high-principled, but we will get to that. But he had his ideals, his ideas and those were set in stone. And it was incredibly hard to keep them in the 1950s. It was not possible for me to join Pioneer. Everyone joined it but my parents would not take it, it simply was not possible. So, that was also something that distinguished me, but it was also because I was Brychová. I mean because of my name. I do not know why it was like that, but it was because of my father´s categorical approach to the regime and so on. Later, when self-employed people were supposed to join unions, he refused and did not join them. He would never join it, the union. It was not called a union; unions were in the countryside. This - it was municipal. Well, he did not join it, he had principles that he lived by all his life and continued to live by. And then it manifested itself, we will get to that, that they took revenge on me. So, now about the school. I remember that we had various... Everything copied the Soviet Union. I heard something else at home and at school, so it was childhood like that. And bans: ‘You cannot say that.‘ Our parents had many friends who had the same beliefs and they somehow surrendered. Some to survive, some because of profit-seeking motives. It was not our case. We had to do everything the way our parents thought was correct. However, I really appreciate that my father did not give up.”