"My mom was always afraid I'd end up like my father, so she protected me from politics. I developed politically on my own. It kept interesting me. Somehow by nature, I didn't like the fact that we had to go in scarves to stand on Slavin, I was never attracted to this communist ideology. I was always such a, I don't know if I should call it a rebel, but a distinctive person. So I studied some things on my own. My mother was such a peculiar person, I don't know whether she was so afraid or she wanted to avoid trouble. My father and I discussed politics later on and we had similar views when it came to politics. Shutting someone out of cultural life is a pretty terrible thing to do, so you can talk about that..."
0:21:09 - 0:22:32 Kyra Matuštík was shaping her own political conscience
"I remember this so much, that I also felt in my youth, even during school, that I was different, that I was not Slovak. For example, in Budapest at university I was asked if I was Slovak or Hungarian or Czech, but I feel at home in the territory of the former Austro-Hungarian monarchy, I speak several languages and I don't have or want to have any such strong nationalistic views, because I just... For example, in Budapest, when I was studying, I heard "My Fatherland", so I was drawn home. I just don't define myself, even though I have a Slovak passport, I don't define myself. My mother never taught me to be intolerant or to hate other nations or nationalities or religions. It was simply shaped in such a way that I felt that something was wrong here. That hatred doesn't lead to anything, quite the opposite."
0:26:30 - 0:28:10 - Kyra's mother raised Kyra from childhood to be tolerant of nationalities and religions
"You couldn't get anything anywhere, the shops were half empty, all grey everywhere, and you were just scrounging for some coupons for Tuzex, and you couldn't be in the synagogue or the church because you were immediately threatened with some kind of firing or a bad cadre review. Nobody had to explain it to me, that was just the way life was. It's a moral question, an ethical question. Whether someone has a backbone or not. I can't imagine that I would have joined the Communist Party or joined a totalitarian regime just to get into a university or to get some important position. It's just sickening to my soul. And I told even those STBs at the interrogations at that time, I don't know if there were three or four, that they could simply destroy my body or they could take it, but they would never take my soul. And so, I repeat, nobody ever taught me to do that, it just seemed natural to me, you're supposed to tell the truth."
1:20:50 - 1:22:14 - For Kyra, the question of character and ethics is fundamental
Kyra Munk Matuštík was born on 5 August 1959 in Bratislava, her mother Mária Munk came from Košice and her father Radislav Matuštík, a prominent art theorist, from Moravia. She has Jewish roots on her mother’s side. Her parents divorced when she was young, and she grew up with her mother. She often played in the art studios on the castle hill in Bratislava. During the time of the normalisation, her father was blacklisted and she had trouble getting into high school and college. In the early 1980s, she went to Prague, where she came into contact with Charter 77 and the Czech underground. She signed the Charter in 1984. Her brother Martin from her father’s first marriage also signed the Charter. From 1981 she was followed by the StB and took part in several interrogations. Later she studied fine arts in Budapest and travelled the world. She devotes herself to fine art, organizing exhibitions of her works with Jewish and ecological themes. At the time of documenting she lived in Bratislava.
