Anna Stará

“I went for six years to a German school in Drnholec and then the next three years I went to a Czech school here in Frélichov. Back then they still did this JUK, as it was called. It was a one-year course where they taught us Czech. So we went to school for nine years, not for eight. Eight years is how long it takes normally, elementary school. And as we were so disadvantaged because we didn’t speak Czech, we had to study one more year this JUK.”

“It was a ramshackle house, it was beams and on top of that used to be a granary before, so there was scrap from the mice falling into your mouth. They should have gotten fully compensated as they didn’t have a so-called ‘konfiskát’. Those who had this konfiskát were not even allowed to get anything back in the restitution. But they were supposed to be fully compensated. But it was a house in ruins ... one of the walls fell into the bedroom. There was a cowshed and it was all wet and dropped into their bed. It was riddled by the rats... There the rats also robbed our Christmas tree. And in Vlasatice it was all the same. They were also supposed to be fully repaid but didn’t get. When my dad was looking at some other houses, the told him: ‘Well, you're old. Here are twelve hectares of fields, you can not get it. You wouldn’t be able to manage it’.”

“It was terrible there, what am I supposed to tell you. There was all that snow and everything. We were totally unaccustomed to such a climate in southern Moravia. In the morning when we got up we couldn’t open the door, there was so much snow there.”

“I don’t speak Croatian anymore. I didn’t teach the kids Croatian either. Because I knew it wasn’t pure, so where could they make use of such a language?” “But we were fifteen times in Yugoslavia, where we made ourselves understood.” “No, we didn’t understand them.” “Dobro došli! Dobar dan!”