Františka Vlčková

“When those huge demonstrations were going on at Letná, I didn’t understand them. I just couldn’t somehow, somehow I could just not take it in, couldn’t feel it. The neighbors’ kids came to me, kids who had been coming to me since they were small, saying: ‘Franny, but you never said a word about it! How could you...? You were in the party, you must have known!’ And I responded: ‘And what was I supposed to know, for Christ’s sake? We’re ordinary people, I see it exactly the same way you do.’ So, again, we managed, we got through it, and it’s possible that I didn’t even argue with anyone about it, and we never hurt anybody.”

“I wanted so badly to be a teacher, really so badly. I kept thinking that it would work out, alas all of my sisters got married, Mom didn’t have much money, and there wasn’t anyone to help me with school, or to support me. So that’s how my teacher dream faded out. So, seeing that I had always been good with my hands, I really wanted to be a seamstress, only that a friend got it instead of me and the next year in the republic there was a measure that income would be regulated, hairdressers closed shop, private seamstresses were forbidden, there wasn’t anywhere for us to train anymore. At the end of the summer holiday I received a paper that I was to start work at ČKD Kolbenka Praha-Vysočany, which was terribly far away, and that I was to train as an electrical mechanic.”