"Of course I welcomed it. It just came by itself. I had the feeling that who should not get involved when I. Just what I've been through, how they've damaged me and that when things start to change and it should come to some good ends, I'm the person who should get involved. Not that I want to go into politics and I want to be president and I don't know what. No, not at all. But to help it change and to finally not have the year 1968 happen, that it will come back. So I had this feeling. God, we are with this VPN, we spent many evenings sitting, talking, simply devoting ourselves to something that I devoted so much time to. But I didn't think that I was sacrificing myself at all. I took it as a completely normal thing that people like me should help each other now. I guess that's how I took it.'
1:24:22 – 1:26:13 - Flashbacks to November 1989 and Danica's VPN entry
"The way I remember that day is that I was already asleep when a man came to wake me up, that what had happened, that the Russians had come. So I felt bad there. That was a terrible blow for me. I really believed that something good would come of it, but that's just how it ended. Well, we've been here for some time and I don't know how we simply decided. We got married at once and went to Belgrade. I think that we originally didn't even want to go there. We went to Vienna and someone already navigated us there. An awful lot of people were waiting for us there. When the train arrived in Vienna, it was full of emigrants, so the platforms were full of our people. and they asked us what was new and what was with us and were very curious. So it was so strange that we came to Vienna and were among our people. After that, I don't even know how someone navigated us to Belgrade. Well, we just went to Yugoslavia, and then we went to Belgrade."
1:00:45 – 1:02:43 - Memories of August 1968 and leaving Slovakia
"One could feel it, so all kinds of things. One would have to remember that. But I just felt that those parents were not persecuted, it's hard to say. Especially the father, the mother did not work, she sat at home and did manual work. Actually, she more or less fed us. I perceived it, but this is how I would have to remember some incidents. But I knew it, I watched the situation. The older I got, the sooner I knew it. Then already in the 11th grade, when we were already preparing for graduation, e.g. they brought college applications to class. Well, I went to pick it up and some professor said, "Well, Okrucká, what do you want?!" Like how could it even occur to you that you would go to school. Well, I wasn't allowed to go to any school at all, and in fact I was supposed to go to some factory to work manually, go to work."
0:42:03 – 0:44:05 - Danica perceived the regime's disadvantage, they did not allow her to apply for college
JUDr. Danica Okrucká was born on July 3, 1940 in Trenčín as the second child of JUDr. Vojtech Okrucký and Oľga, née Čermáková. She had a sister Tatiana who was two years older. Father was a respected attorney, co-founder of the Nehera clothing factory in Trenčín, mother was a housewife. During the war, Danica and her sister, mother and grandmother hid in Ilava in a brewery, later in prison. After the war, they returned, Danica attended elementary school. Even then, she began to perceive that the incoming communist regime did not wish their family well. Nehera was nationalized, father returned to advocacy. The girls had a problem getting to the gymnasium. Danica danced in the folklore group Trenčany and also went to the World Youth Meeting in Moscow, after returning she had to stop dancing. At first she didn’t get into university, she was supposed to go to work in a factory. She got a job in a law firm and studied law remotely. In August 1968, she and her husband, an artist, traveled to Vienna and from there to Belgrade, but they returned home because of their parents. At work, she encountered various political processes. She divorced and married a builder. In November 1989, she co-founded VPN in Trenčín, after the arrival of Vladimír Mečiar, she preferred to leave. She worked until she was almost 80, currently she gardens and participates in compiling a publication about her father.
