Anežka Stehlíková

"Maruška got married, and Anička got married about two years later. It was a proper Slovak wedding that took three days, and there were - I don't know exactly but we couldn't fit in the big house - 60, 80 people. Maruška married her husband from this village. The first day, it started with the groom going to ask the parents for the bride. The second day was the permission and the bachelor party. The third day was the actual wedding. My mom came from twelve children, my dad came from four, and so all the relatives including cousins and godparents, our (parents') godparents and our godparents attended. Of course, I didn't know all of them because I was the youngest. All I remember is my sister kneeling down and begging my parents for forgiveness for everything. That was the farewell to her parents; so sad, we were all crying. During the actual wedding was, she was like the Virgin Mary, all dressed up beautifully, and I felt she'd get stolen from us. I don't know where that carme from. I feared I'd never see her again, she'd just be gone. I sat there in the corner and I cried."

"The areas they needed to resettle were determined on the train. We were actually dropped off in Cheb. They brought us to Cheb in June. Of course, some of the people from that first batch were already there and they said that the winters there were bitter. My mother said that she had had more than her fair share of the winter and didn't want any more. She wanted to go to Moravia. My dad's parents were there; they got to Moravia. The way it was meant to be, my parents ended up in Zahrádky. I don't know exactly, and they never told us if they had no say in it or that they just didn't get their wish; they went to Zahrádky. They put us in one house and there were 80 people crammed into it. We lived there for a month before the district decided how the apartments would be allocated. The community of Zahrádky let us choose here in Borek."