I was a love child
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Markéta Šonková, nee Schimánková, was born in Prague at St Apollinaire Hospital on 4 October 1936 to Anežka Dumcová, nee Schimánková, as love child. Her parents never married and her mother did not even list her father’s name in her birth certificate. She had German nationality from her mother. She spent the first three months of her life with her mother and then was given to a foster family in Buková in southern Bohemia. Her mother commuted to see her and they kept in touch throughout their lives. Her foster parents, Václav and Marie Janečeks, had a small farm that supported the family. Together with her, the Janecek family cared for seven other children. Her foster parents raised her in faith in God. During the war, several of her half-siblings were on total deployment. Markéta Šonková entered the German school in Olešnice in 1942. She experienced the end of the war in Čečovice. After the war, she and her mother were threatened with deportation to Germany as German citizens, which fortunately did not materialise. In 1946, the witness went to a Czech school in Horní Stropnice. After school she was very keen to become a cook. However, the state needed labour in the factories, so instead of apprenticing as a cook, she started to apprentice as a spinner. For a short time after her apprenticeship she worked in a textile factory in Jindřichův Hradec. When her foster mother became seriously ill, she was released from her job and returned home to Buková. In the early 1950s she managed to find a job as a cook’s helper. From then until retirement she worked as a cook in various establishments. In 2024, Markéta Šonková lived in the Home for the Elderly in Dobrá Voda.
