We had to chase for everything that was commonly available in the West
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Božena Tichá, née Smékalová, was born on 2 April 1930 in Přemyslovice na Hané as the middle of three children of the shoemaker Petr Smékal and his wife Cecílie. She reflects interestingly on everyday life during the First Republic and the later wartime atmosphere. In 1941, her mother died, and Božena had to be brought up by a parish priest and his housekeeper in Přemyslovice. After elementary school, which she finished in 1944, she took a full-time job as an apprentice to a master hairdresser in Olšany near Prostějov. On one trip home, she saw two of the many victims of Nazi persecution displayed in coffins in nearby Javoříček. Her father, a prisoner of war in Russia during World War I and an expert in the language during the liberation, looked forward to talking to the Soviets. But when he discovered that they were gang-raping women, he abandoned his plan and hid his three daughters behind locked doors. After her apprenticeship, Božena took a job as a hairdresser, but she was paid so little that she chose to work in a belt factory instead. In 1950, she married František Tichý, a barber from a family of tradesmen in Náměšť na Hané. The regime pressured him to give up his trade and go to work in the mines - to avoid this, František preferred to work in the freezing plants, which severely undermined his health. He died at the age of fifty-five. During the Communist rule, the witness visited relatives in Austria several times, where she experienced the shock of all that could be bought in the West. In addition, she also made a trip to the Soviet Union, where she found out that it was not the advanced country that the propaganda talked about. At the time of the interview, Božena Tichá was living in the František Senior Citizens’ Home in Náměšť na Hané.
