Anna Vojtková

“At first Mum still thought she’d go back. Then, after the revolution, some people got some things back in restitution, so I asked her if I should also try to see if something could be sorted out for them, and Mum said: ‘The Hanáks [inhabitants of the Haná region of Moravia - trans.] can go and stick it.’ She didn’t want anything, she was already embittered and didn’t want anything from the Czechs. She was glad to be able to go and visit there again, but she didn’t want to get anything back.”

“I met my husband by chance at the wedding of our neighbour. When I was getting ready to go home, he asked me to give him my address. And I retorted, come on, you won’t even remember me, and I’ve got a terribly long Croatian name. And he said: ‘My mum’s Croatian as well.’ My mother asked him what her name was. Mokrušová, he said. And where was she from? Nový Přerov. So Mum told me to run home and bring that wedding photo. So I brought it, and Mum showed it to him and said: ‘This is your mum, this is your granny.’ So he stared at that, then he went home and told what had happened. We started going out together, and half a year later our mums met again. They hadn’t seen each other since the deportation, the Mokrušes had been one of the first to be evicted, in 1946. It was such a touching reunion... And Auntie Jago, who lived in Domašov, told me: ‘I’m so glad you two found each other.’ I’ll never forget how she said that. It was so nice.”