Agnesa Piasecká

* 1954

  • "But you know what, maybe the closest I was to the bass was... do you know when? When in the eighties... I don't know exactly which one, eight? When signatures were being collected, for Cardinal Tomášek for the bishops. And I was very active, at that time I was already at a higher level. I didn't care and we collected an awful lot of signatures. And it happened to us that in some southern church, there was a vicar... and we needed to run to the house, there were two of us... to the house where the mass was held and at the end there in the south, we left the signature sheets... our stupidity. Well, and then it actually happened... when we came back from the house, the papers were not there. Well, and the chaplain at that time, someone... said that where should we go, where are the papers, and the chaplain, that is, the vicar, took the papers... the original, with names... that was a great courage of those people, with addresses and names... and he didn't want to give them to us. And what do you think, I had a terrible argument with that person there, about what kind of character he has, that he would simply throw a lot of people into such suspicion, unhappiness, because he is going to give it to someone. At that time they were with the national committees... the church secretary was called, or something like that. These were the people who were in the department of culture and had the task of monitoring what each parish priest was doing and saying. And according to that, he was given, or taken away, permission to carry out activities, and this vicar was a fax... it was called fax day. It was some kind of, simply... well, it was an organization of priests who served the state power, so I'll say it politely. Well... but I threw it out, I gave him the suggestion that he should give the paper and I will make the six signatures with invented names and so on, so that he can show the secretary how active he is. So I peed some addresses, names... of non-existent people from my thumb. We gave him that and we took the originals, but at that time I think that if the secretary had stayed there... that's why I was so angry with them afterwards, I was... well, we're not at the revolution yet. "

  • "I remember only one teacher from school, I don't know his name anymore... who taught us something like civic education, maybe civic education. And he told us about the Prague Spring, about Dubček and so on. And he turned us on so much, well. We made a bulletin board, as if it was so current, well. Articles were cut out of the newspaper... it was there, we were so excited. And so during that year sixty-eight… Seven… seven, eight. So, even before arriving… Even before the arrival of the Russians. And even... like this. The Russians came in August, twenty one and we started the ninth year in September. And this exact teacher who activated us in this way told us, I remember exactly that... that no matter what happens, or no matter what he says in a week, in two, in a month... everything he has told us so far is the truth and for that's what he stands for, and let him be forced to withdraw and so on, it's no longer true. Well, then they forced us to take down the bulletin board in Dubček, and we fought for it, and we were... Today I have a different opinion. Today, I don't know... I hope I can say that, today I consider Dubček an old communist, the last law he signed, I don't even respect him that much, hey. But then it was like that, we were excited about how good Dubček is. And then you had some problems because of that... because you didn't want to take down the bulletin board, or... Well, we had, but at the school level. We had, we had, I don't know. Well, they went... like on a shift, other teachers too... put it down, because this, because that. I don't even know who put it down in the end, I just know that in that ninth year I was the class president, and I know that we insisted that it would be, that we wouldn't put it down... but it was put down. I don't remember anymore, I don't really know in what style or what they made us do."

  • “They… as farmers, as they mentioned, accepted it… or? Well, it must have been terrible for my grandfather, because they had seven children and they made a living by working in the fields... they grew wheat, corn, everything... for people and animals. Well, actually, if I'm not mistaken, in 1947, there was a big drought after the war. And I know that her last child, my aunt, was also born. But there weren't communists yet... there was a coup in 1948, so only after that. I have a memory of what my grandmother used to tell me about how terrible it was for them. They paid like, like my grandfather was kulak... they paid something they called a contingent. Something like, I don't know VAT. They were supposed to hand over the state... they had to determine exactly according to the area, I don't know... how much, hey. When they didn't have anything, nothing happened, but they had to hand this over to the state, but... And maybe... do you remember those numbers? I don't remember the numbers... they didn't say that. I only know that they raised two pigs. One was for them, a family of nine, and one, almost entirely, was for the state. So many and so many treatments, so many and so many. I don't remember the numbers. Maybe my aunt, not me. Well, and... well, that's what grandma used to say, that already when they were communists, that is, after the forty-eighth, that after the harvest, that means perhaps autumn... after the harvest, that they already had grain stored somewhere in the granary, corn and so on... and that they came to their house like that, the chairman of the national committee, hey... the main boss, a communist, a couple of guys, a wing. And with shovels... a gypsy, at that time he was not a Roma, and he used a shovel to put wheat in sacks and they took everything from them. They let them, I think, they didn't say it, but I also think that they wanted to force the grandfather to join JRD, a unified peasant cooperative. That they were saved, what that gypsy, when no one was looking, threw a shovel outside, outside... that, that. Everything was taken from them. I know that my mother never wanted corn in her life, not even boiled or anything, because they only had corn that whole year until the next harvest. They also ground it for bread, and so on. That they had great misery, that they felt very, very, very bad, then life was after the communists."

  • "Actually, when was your mother born? On the first... of the seventh, 1935. Thirty-five... I would still... because by the way, since you say you don't know your father, you probably don't know your grandparents from that side either. I know the name from that side. That way, I don't have anything to confirm it, I was just told. There I wanted to add a little more information, Vida Buljevic and she should be buried in Dubrovnik, but I don't know if she is or what the truth is, that's what I was told. There I actually wanted to add the fact that the grandparents had five daughters and one of them slept through the night… with the guy.. at the age of eighteen... that was a huge thing. It was not normal like today, that up and down, because basically in that village, the shame fell on the whole family and all those girls used to be affected by this. So my mother decided, with the help of my grandparents, to somehow cover it up and arrange a kind of marriage, and it basically didn't work... all their lives those people lived very badly, until they got divorced after about fifteen years. Well, and this... this guy, that is, my father, was called Božidar, and in fact, at the time when my mother became pregnant, he was accused of being a Yugoslav spy, a so-called Titovec! Then I looked at the history, what does it mean, who was Tito and so on, and he was locked up, and he was sent to the uranium mines, but I don't know exactly where. I never had a lot of means, but I didn't even succeed... I had one or two letters everywhere that I found in the estate of my grandparents, and I know that his last address was somewhere in Opatija, in Yugoslavia. Well, I … him in my life... not even in the photo, no contact. Come on."

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  • 1

    Košice

    (audio)
    duration: 02:14:45
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th century
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“I don’t know what others went into, in this revolution... absolutely everything came true for me... I went ahead with the idea of ​​removing the communists from the leading role of the party... let them run for favor in the elections, but it cannot be an order!”

Agnesa Piasecká during EYD recording.
Agnesa Piasecká during EYD recording.
photo: Photo by Post Bellum SK

Agnesa Piasecká was born on January 29, 1954 in Jablonec nad Nisou. Relatives from the mother’s side came from the Orava region, specifically from Zákamenné. Mother’s name was the same as Agnesa and grandparents, Helena Polťáková and Anton Michalica. As for her father, Agnes was raised by her stepfather, Ján Slivka. After 1948, i.e. after the communist coup, Agnes’s grandfather was labeled a kulak, and since he owned a large farm and a significant portion of land, he was obliged to pay the so-called state contingent. Agnesa spent her early childhood with her grandparents in Gemer, in Orávka. After an unsuccessful attempt to start elementary school near her parents in Stropkov, Agnes decided to return to Gemer. In 1960, Agnesa became a pupil of the so-called fifth grade in nearby Rimavská Seč, where she commuted by train. She was extremely happy there, having gone there not for five, but for the first six years of school. Despite the political regime at the time, Agnes’ grandmother never resented the church and guided her granddaughter in the same way. Even though no one left Oravka, they were not swayed and remained true to their beliefs. In 1967, Agnesa entered the seventh grade of primary school in Stropkov, where she completed primary school. In 1970, even because of the not entirely satisfactory home environment, Agnesa decided on the Secondary Medical School in Prešov, where three years later she successfully graduated as a midwife. As soon as she finished high school, she decided to work as a nurse at a psychiatric hospital in Šternberk, where she once worked part-time in 1971. In the meantime, however, she met her future husband in Stropkov, who was studying in Košice. She did not stay in Šternberk for long, and in 1974 their first son, Aleš, was born. However, Aleš was far from the last child in the family, as Agnes and her husband have eight children together, five sons and three daughters. Agnesa started to be significantly more active right in Šternberk. There she met her aunt’s friend, who was studying at the theology faculty and had access to the-forbidden literature. She initiated Agnes into the basics of samizdat, thanks to which she learned many things that were not taught at school. In 1974, the family moved to Košice, where Agnes was intensely involved in Christian activities. She was able to devote herself to them thanks to visiting the local church, where she was able to create this community. In the apartment, she organized meetings, groups for children, showed Franciscan films, and even accepted a visit from missionaries. She also took part in a pilgrimage to Velehrad in 1985, where she took many photographs, which she then projected at her home. During the Gentle Revolution, she presented the VPN demands that came from Prague to a huge crowd in Košice. She was significantly active in Christian life, but also during the revolution. After the revolution, in January of the following year, Agnes was co-opted into the Council of the National Committee of the city of Košice. Several were co-opted, and they had the task of monitoring the work of the communists who remained there. Their task was to gradually remove individual leaders and replace them with new ones. Later during the nineties, she started a business together with her husband, while in a small shop she devoted herself to the work of an economist for sixteen long years. Currently, Agnesa is retired, which she is very proud of.