Marie Poláková

"I didn't notice the political processes as such, but the fact is that the family had quite a few problems at the time, because they closed our store. They came to pick him up sometime in the evening. They came like that in those leather coats and hats. They took him. And they took away my grandfather... what is it called, where the patients are, not the hospital, the office, I can't remember now." - "Surgery?" - "Surgery. They took away the doctor's office he had in the Fruit Market."

“When I was there for the first time, they offered to let me study there for a year to learn it, to work with them there. I went to Washington to the embassy to extend my visa, and they did not extend it. Therefore, I had to go back, but I still had some time to find a husband. Because I wanted to do it legally, I had to find someone to marry me. If you´ve seen the movie Green Card, something a little similar. I was at the largest falconry gathering, which was in Alamos, which is the state of Colorado. There were about four hundred falconers there, and since I was an exotic from communist Czechoslovakia, of course, they invited me to say something. So I said: 'And who would you marry me?' It was a lot of fun, but then I visited some acquaintances in Chicago and their acquaintance was willing to marry me for money. He had to fly to the Czech Republic to marry me here in Prague. At that time I was milking cows, no one knew that it was a sham wedding.”