“We used to go to the Sokolovňa to play volleyball in the playground, so we would meet there. But during socialism, they simply took the Sokolovňa and turned it into church, a chapel, where they used to go. There was a milk-seller among us, Mrs Rajskup, who went to town for a confession, and the priest told her, ‘Why can’t you go to the chapel there at Koliba?’ And she said, ‘At Koliba, there is no chapel. There is just the Sokolovňa, and if you call that a chapel then you are not a real priest.’ The Sokolovňa used to be right next to the school. There was a big and a small playground. Local people from Koliba had built the Sokolovňa using old bricks. I remember going there with my mother when I was about six years old. I would clean bricks and the men were building the Sokolovňa. It was like a symbol of Koliba, but then they sold it for some crowns. Later, when there was no Sokolovňa, they gave that area to some company that prospered well.”
“Then the Russians came. All of us were gathered in the cellar, but I got the measles, and suddenly some Russian soldier came to us. My parents got scared, because I was about 15 or 16 years old, and as I was lying in a bed, they put me under the bed. That poor soldier came just because someone had told him that we had a sewing machine, and he needed to repair his uniform. And all the time I was hidden under the bed, I was afraid even to breathe. The boy repaired his uniform, he thanked and left. And yet the Russian soldiers put information on our door saying that I was ill so no one should enter our house.”
Vlasta Zábojníkova was born on January 27, 1927 and comes from Bratislava. She attended elementary school at Koliba in Bratislava. Later she graduated from a girl’s secondary school on Dunajská Street. As a child she was a member of the Sokol gymnastics organization and with her mother she attended theatrical performances at the massive gymnastic festivals in 1933 and 1938. After World War II, she worked as a teacher in the town of Zlaté Moravce, and then in Slazany or Kolíňany, and she worked on the reforming of the Sokol organization. She was also active as a volunteer of the Red Cross, which she has been a member of since 1951. She is in fact the oldest living member of the Slovak Red Cross.
