Ing. Jana Rohlíková

“It seemed to them.. because my mum was a member of the Czechoslovak Communist Party so they took it for granted. Only everyone pitied grandmother because she commuted to Liběchov. At first, my mum was in charge of a haberdashery in Mlazice. Then she worked in various positions because she had passed the secondary school leaving exam at a business school, so she could keep the books. She could count on a Schoty [Russian abacus – trans.] and I admired her when she was moving the beads. Simply expressed, she worked in various positions in the Vagonka company and she worked as an accountant in a chemical plant and at last, she worked in youth after school care and passed secondary school leaving exam at pedagogical grammar school. Third secondary school leaving exam and she was in charge of youth after school care in Pšovka. She really thrived on working with children. She involved the whole family in it: my brother prepared maps for her for various trips which she could go on with them. We had mulberry trees all along the long fence in our garden, and she and her children grew silkworms there, but then the whole family paid for it when we had to put in whole trees when the silkworms started to pupate. To cut a long story short, my mum was a highly active person. She was also active in the Women's National Council, the Red Cross, and in Sokol. She visited socially disadvantaged families to find out about the conditions there, she gave those reports somewhere in the district office." - “Did not your dad join the Party?” - “No, my dad was a Social Democrat of the Masaryk type. Aunt Růža was a National Socialist like her dad, (I mean) my grandfather Jiří Bein was. It was a varied society! They discussed but never argued. On the contrary, they helped each other. My mum went to intercede with the Czechoslovak Communist Party for Růža when they fired her but it did not help.

“Karel said at the opening of the school year that they should commemorate president Beneš on the one-year anniversary of his death. Well, and they imputed to my aunt Růža that she put him up to it even though it was not true. He did it on his own, he had been a boy scout so he was still honest.” - “Were there any consequences for her?” - “There were huge consequences for aunt Růža because she managed to lead the class she loved so much to graduation. All of them were smart, educated people, there was only one boy, a communist, the son of maths teacher Dvořák from the grammar school. Then, he became a member of Komsomol and he studied. But she loved the others. Some students (who did not attend) this class but (attended) a younger class ripped or destroyed some communist decorations and they also imputed it to her. When she finished teaching this graduation class, they fired her from the Mělník grammar school and she was transferred to Kolín grammar school where she only had an office. She slept there and she commuted to our place. She also got kicked out of the town's one-room flat. She had to move out in one week. It was fairly harsh to her. And it was even harsher when she was transferred from the Kolín grammar school to - how is it called? Next to Benešov? I have it written down here somewhere. To a secondary school. It is not Říčany. To Vlašim! So she taught there at secondary school. She could not teach English, she had to teach only Russian there; she then passed the state exam in Russian so she gained the teaching qualification in it. Then she was transferred to Benešov grammar school. They prepared for her there... they gave her a part of headmaster Šístko´s flat and prepared a one-room flat for her where she could (live) well... and she spent the rest of her life there.