Draha Schnirch

* 1943

  • "My husband and I were here in early November in '89 and we were in Brno and we met my former boss from work. He was an awfully nice gentleman who I used to go to the measurements with, and he was my boss, and so we knew each other. We were in a shop, so I quickly ran out and we went to the nearest pub in Brno and I sort of said, 'Well, it's already going to be screwed up here, already in Poland and Germany...' He was still scared, he was still looking around to see what was going to happen. We came back to America and I came to work and everybody said, 'What did you do there? Communism fell.' That was right before."

  • "In the beginning, we used to write, I don't know, twice a week, a lot, a lot of letters, and once a year we used to phone each other because it was so expensive. Then when the second daughter was born, my mother came to visit, we invited her, and then not every year, but a couple of times. I came for the first time with the kids in '92, after ten years." - "Was that without any problems?" - "It was quite, in those days if you were somewhere for more than a week or a few days you had to report to the police station. When I was in Prague, the gentleman who checked passports asked why I had come. I said, 'I want to introduce my children to my family...' - 'Well, go on, go on, there are two gentlemen waiting for you.' Well, of course no one was waiting there, it made him happy to think he was going to scare me.'

  • "Then, I don't know what year they took it away from him because he was not a member of the Communist Party and worked in the quarry below Vratíkov. I remember that a truck came and took everything out. People stood and looked and said, 'They took their vacuum cleaner, they took their fridge,' but that's not true, they were only taking things from the shop. That's how gossip gets made sometimes. I don't know, I was a kid, but he wanted to support his family, he loved it, and he lost that kind of purpose he had in life. I'm sure he must have suffered because it was hard work in the winter. Back then, they didn't have the insulating clothes like they do now. I know he had boots and he would put on some boots, he would wrap his feet all day in the cold, and gloves, he certainly suffered through that."

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    Boskovice, 27.04.2023

    (audio)
    duration: 01:09:18
    media recorded in project Příběhy regionu - JMK REG ED
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That would be the opposite of emigration.

Draha Schnirch in 1964
Draha Schnirch in 1964
photo: Archive of the witness

Draha Schnirch was born on 18 July 1943 to parents Květá and Jan Řehořek in the small village of Kořenec in the Drahanská vrchovina. Her parents owned a small grocery store and ran a pub in the village. After 1948 they lost their business and their father had to work in a stone quarry. During the reconstruction of the building they had big problems with the permit and for two years they lived in a dismantled house. Draha Schnirch, after graduating from the municipal school in Boskovice, began to study at the Brno Construction Industry School, where she graduated in 1961. She met her future husband and married Stanislav Schnirch in 1967. In 1969, her husband received a job offer in America, where they left in September that year. Due to political developments in Czechoslovakia at the time, they stayed permanently in New Jersey. While still in Czechoslovakia, they had their first daughter Martina (1969) and in America Dana (1971). She and her children visited Czechoslovakia for the first time in 1979. She and her husband were in their native country at the beginning of November 1989 and followed other events in America. They have never considered returning to the Czech Republic permanently, but they regularly come here for a few weeks. Currently (2024) she and her husband live in Ringwood, New Jersey.