Jarmila Volfová

“(While you were working in the Čedok travel agency, didn’t it occur to you that you would go on some tour and remain abroad?) Of course it did. I was going with these tours, and I did think about staying there and not coming back. But I felt sympathy for my parents, because I also knew about the problems faced by the relatives of those people who had remained abroad, and from the passports and visas department I knew what would happen. In case of one tour to Austria, only one elderly couple has come back, and it was only because they had already paid for another tour. (How did you deal with it?) There was a scandal in the passports department because of it. We were not able to deal with it. We could not tie them up with a rope. The clients simply did not return to the bus. But it was not just this. The customs declarations and visas were terrible for the people. It was a measure which was very humiliating. It meant restricting people. If they had given the people the freedom instead and said: ‘If you don’t like it here, then go out to try living abroad,’ a great number of people would have come back, because they would have seen that everywhere they would need to work. If they had kept the borders free as it was done after the Velvet Revolution, many of those people would have abandoned their plans to emigrate. People had to obtain many documents before they were even allowed to travel. Later they were even sending their henchmen with the people to watch them and observe whether they were meeting somebody abroad. At one time you even had to sign a declaration in which you promised that you would not establish any contacts, and if you did, you would inform about it. It was a horrible time.”

“My mom’s name was Friederika Schererová, and then they rechristened her as Bedřiška, which is a Czech version of the same name. One of the conditions for my parents’ wedding was that mom would have a Czech name. The worst thing was that dad’s parents shared this opinion as well. Since two members of the family had been executed, they had a bias against Germans. They criticized my dad for marrying a German woman. (Were you going to visit these relatives in South Bohemia?) We rarely went there. Dad did not go there often, and mom almost didn’t go there at all, because she simply didn’t feel well there. There were trifles, but they were for instance afraid that she would not give proper food to dad. If he didn’t eat properly, we would need to see a doctor. They were hinting at things like that. When we arrived there, auntie inspected my mom’s suitcase to check whether she didn’t bring something which they would not like there.”

“My grandma lived right next to us in the forest in the white house, the same one where my mom was born as well. I loved going to my grandma’s when I was a little girl. I would always get a little toy pram with my doll and go to my grandma. They had to take care not to give me any eggs, because I imagined that the doll was crying, and I was thus rocking the pram vehemently, and when I arrived to grandma I often brought scrambled eggs in the pram. Grandma had no running water in her house at that time, and she was thus bringing water from a spring. The buckets with water stood arranged in a row in the kitchen, ready to be used. Since my doll was dirty from the broken eggs, I bathed her in those buckets, and grandma then had to throw all the water out, because it could no longer be used.”

“My father was in the uranium mines in Jáchymov. By coincidence it was in the 1950s when political prisoners were interned there. He was bringing in letters and presents for some of the prisoners, and he was punished for that. Some good soul saw to it that he was sentenced for that, and he was thus imprisoned in Cheb for a while. He was rehabilitated after the revolution. He was sentenced to two or three months for helping political prisoners. I remember Mrs. Chodorová, whose son was imprisoned as a political prisoner. Dad was bringing him letters and presents from her. He was not the only one. As it was in the 1950s, somebody saw to it that he was eventually sentenced by the District Court in Kraslice. As a result he was interned in the correction facility in Cheb. This happened in 1953 or 1954, it was before I started going to school. I remember that we went there several times to visit him. Moreover, it was around Christmas, so it was sad.”