Anna Vojtková

* 1955

National minorities, Moravian Croats
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    Meeting her husband

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    “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.”

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    We only spoke Croatian at home

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    “We grew up with Mum and Granny, and we always spoke Croatian at home. When I went to school, I didn’t even know how to say some things in Czech. Mum had a difficult time in the place she came to. The people who lived there, gold diggers, they didn’t know who’d come there, what kind of people. They thought they were gypsies because they didn’t even have ID cards, they’d been confiscated. My mum was brave, and very proud. And she told us a lot about Přerov, so we grew up as if we had been there.”

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    Mum didn’t want anything back

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    “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.”

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    Šternberk, 06.06.2016

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    duration: 57:27
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Mum told us about Nový Přerov every evening. As if we had grown up there

Anna Vojtková
Anna Vojtková
photo: Pamět Národa - Archiv
photo: Pamět Národa - Archiv
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Anna Vojtková was born in 1955 in Šternberk. She comes from a family of Moravian Croats that was evicted from its home village of Nový Přerov in southern Moravia and moved to Domašov. The Vranešices always spoke Croatian at home, even after their deportation, and so Anna and her siblings also grew up using the language. Her mother often told the children stories from Nový Přerov, and because the family maintained close ties with other Croats, Anna and her siblings also consider themselves Croats. By chance, Anna Vojtková’s husband also comes from a Croatian family from Nový Přerov. Mrs Vojtková can still speak Moravian Croatian on a very high level.

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