Irena Meixnerová

“I worked in the Revolutionary Trade Union Movement [ROH] and all the time, I was a treasurer. Once the chairman and the vice-chairman were absent, I was at the third position in ROH. Bonuses were signed up and they were very reluctant because we [non-communists] mustn’t have known about it. Commonly it was signed by the chairman or the vice-chairman of ROH – communists, so they agreed with it. But when I was signing it up, it was unpleasant for the man, [who gave it to me for signing up]. He didn’t want me to read it: ‘Sign it quickly!’ – ‘I will read it, surely I won’t sign something that I haven’t read.’ And I asked him: ‘Explain to me what such and such does. I’m sorry about it.’ Because I knew that he did nothing but he was a member of the Communist Party. He replied: ‘He has such a bonus because he pays a membership fee to the Communist Party! How could he otherwise pay it?!’ – ‘What? I thought, that you are to evaluate the work here!’ – ‘So will you sign it or not?! Who is after you?’ He didn’t discuss with me. So I signed it. Yes, I was cowardly. If I didn’t sign it, somebody else would do it.”

“The rest of the war passed over calmly, you might say. However, it was terrible for me because I was still just a child, who couldn’t read yet. Nobody had time to concern about me. I absolutely couldn’t be outside because after that Gestapo raid, they were afraid to let me go out. Nobody couldn’t know, whether somebody won’t go around. All the time, I sat in the attic and used to watch out from a small window. In the winter when it was cold, I was in the stable. Later, they were sorry that I have to spend all the time in this manner and sometimes they let me have lunch with them. Otherwise, they used to bring the food to me to the hiding place because around noon, a post-woman could come. So they locked all the doors and in the case, that somebody would knock, I was to hide quickly to the cellar, which was the nearest hiding place. It was the fear that forced me as a small child to stay in quiet.”

“At a meeting, where they promoted the collectivization, Mr. Kaňok, the chairman of [the local committee of] the Communist Party, began to threaten them, that if they act like this and will reject the collectivization, they could get to Siberia. Mr. Kohut stood up and said: ‘Why should you send them to Siberia, to that paradise? Send them rather to America to those capitalists, who will exploit them.’ But this event influenced the dossier written on me, when I was applying to the university. It was written there, that I am a ‘daugter of kulak’, who was in America, and so on. There was also written that I am a ‘fanatical Catholic’.”

“We were sleeping and suddenly I heard some bustle outside. I glanced from the window: people were running around. I didn’t have telephone, yet, so I went out to the hall and there, I learned from people, what had happened. I packed my daughter and my colleague, who also lives here, told me: ‘We must go to a shop. I have nothing at home.’ With each other, we sat with our children, because people were buying in flour and other durable food. They knew from the war, that during the war, there was nothing to eat. So we went to the shop, too. We were afraid that it was a beginning of a war because tanks were there. I didn’t go out with my little daughter, she was only one year and a half. Nor into the park, just around our house, because I was afraid; I didn’t want to be near to some incident.”