Marie Selicharová

“At school everyone spoke Czech. Since I attended an elementary school from the first to fourth grade, I heard no Croatian word. I remember my granny from my mother´s side could not speak a single work in Croatian, she understood but didn’t speak at all. For example when they came to town, it was kind of a Czech and a bit of Croatian. Only a little Croatian. My children learned Croatian in the street, we didn’t speak anything else but Czech at home with my husband. At my parents we also didn’t speak anything else but Czech. With my sister we could go to school in Dioš (neighbouring village), there was a Croatian school, only two kilometres to the school. But my father said: ‚No, you will go to school in Končenice, you go to the Czech school. No Croatian school, you are Czech, so you go to the Czech school.‘ So we used to walk five kilometres there and five back, we didn’t go to Dioš. But I didn’t feel it any burden, as there was no other way for me than walking those five kilometres to Končenice on foot. Later we rode bikes, my sister and I. But I didn’t want to go to Dioš, as I was no Croat and felt Czech.”

“At the time, when the events in Bohemia took place, I was pregnant, so I stayed home. But I was aware, that there were dežurstva in Jednotě – all day service, from the morning till the next morning, journalists switched to monitor everything, what was happening in Bohemia in 1968. Even in two issued of Jednota there was an attachment with information for Czech tourists on where to go and who to turn to here in Yugoslavia, who can help them in Croatia to get back home, to stay until they could do so. Unfortunately nothing remained until today. Not a single issue from that time, where you could read what kind of info we in Jednota provided to tourists. It was sent to Sibenik, Rijeka, Split, Zadar, to all the places where most Czech tourists went to help them out. Back in 1990s I just could not believe something like that would happen. I could not believe, that a neighbour I used to come for a coffee together, who used to visit me and vice versa and I helped them to prepare their son´s wedding, she left this morning; they bought bread in the shop, each one had a loaf under their armpit and as I went to work, they´d shout at me: ‚Komšinka, doviđenja!‘ (Good-bye, neighbour!) I had my eyes wide open wondering what was going on. When I returned back home, they were not there, their houses closed and in the evening there was an attack on Daruvar. I can never forgive them that.”