PhDr. Eva Šothová

* 1961

  • "Well, the system was probably such that we could only meet people from the embassies of the socialist camp, that is, we could not meet or communicate with anyone else, not even Romanians. There was a shortage of food, because that was the period when Ceaușescu saved the most, and the workers, the Romanian workers who worked at the embassy as support staff, were also afraid. They didn't want to talk much, they weren't allowed, but I know that I don't know... they only had gas for two hours in the evening, for example, or electricity. They were not allowed to use refrigerators, only one forty-watt light bulb, they were allowed to use cold water. Very difficult conditions. In hospitals, for example, in winter, babies who were born were warmed with hot water bottles. Even then, after the revolution, they showed in the news how people actually have frozen water in their toilets in apartment buildings."

  • "And it really started on December 15, when the Securitate – the secret service had the need to recall this priest and people stood up for him and then actually started the demonstrations and big strikes. Otherwise, Timisoara is a beautiful city with big boulevards and a square, so it really bordered on a rather dangerous situation there, which ended up being a tragic event, because tanks, soldiers and heavy fire were deployed, shooting from airplanes, from helicopters. There was even a story of a mother who was decorating the Christmas tree at home, because it was just before Christmas, when a ricocheted bullet basically killed her. So far, there is no exact information on how many people died. It is kept secret. To this day, it has not been investigated or specified how many people were killed in Bucharest as well."

  • "He (Nicola Ceaușescu, editor's note) tried to run away immediately, that is, he ran away, and tanks and armored cars were deployed immediately, and we actually saw pools of blood in front of the embassy from the window. But in my life, I will never forget how those tanks went and shot into the crowd of people and actually ran over the Dacias that were parked on the edges. That was a terrible sight. That cannot be forgotten. But still on the television, Ceaușescu escaped, and the program of celebratory songs and poems on Ceaușescu was still on the television."

  • "Basically, there was still shooting every night and a lot. At Christmas, there was the most shooting. I will never forget that Christmas in my life, I always cry a little, because Christmas really reminds me of an unbelievable shooting. We didn't have food, we didn't have anything, so I baked bread and the boys didn't sleep all night, because everything in that concrete city was incredibly loud. There were broken storefronts, indeed, pools of blood on the roads, on those boulevards. But in the morning the cars drove up, everything was washed, the shop windows were glazed, and at night there was shooting again, so it was difficult, and we heard the shooting because they had guns, we heard the shooting for half a year at night, at any time."

  • „We knew it was difficult there, so we took stock – dried soups, everything that could be dried or even from clothes, so that's how we ate. Then we sold it to these Russian students. It was such a nice experience, we lived in a room on the sixth floor and actually the whole dormitory was full of cockroaches and cockroaches. So it was full, in the evening, when we turned it off, it started to rustle and they crawled all over us, so we slept with the lights on for half a year. Well, there were also mice running around, scratching behind the radiator, so we were also thinking of everything possible to catch them. And I don't know if I can talk, we had such a tiny mouse in the toilet, very cute, so we named her Nina Pavlovna. And when we went to the toilet, we talked to Nina Pavlovna.“

  • "When it happened, we happened to be with our parents and we were at Domaša. The husband went to take a bath, and when he came out of the water, the sky was strangely orange, the sun was shining very brightly. We had no idea, we didn't know, because there was no information, actually the information was delayed, that it was published only a few days later, but he came out of the water and immediately blisters appeared all over his body. So we went home afterwards and we had no idea, we didn't know what it was. But only later, actually, only when we came to Romania, did we find out that in Romania all the people received either iodine injections or iodine tablets. Pregnant women were taken care of. Nothing here. I actually went to Prague, and in fact, neither pregnant women nor anyone else was taken care of in Prague."

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    Bratislava, 11.05.2023

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I wish very much that there would be goodness, decency, calm and peace among people

Skladanie pionierskeho sľubu, Tokajík,1968.
Skladanie pionierskeho sľubu, Tokajík,1968.
zdroj: archív pamätníka

Eva Šothová was born on March 4, 1961 in Prešov in the family of Jozef Ivanisko (1935) and Irena Ivanisková, born Zajkotna (1940). Her grandfather on her mother‘s side was the mayor of the village of Valkovce in the district of Svidník, grandmother Mária was a housewife. Grandfather Michal from the father‘s side was a shoemaker in the village of Lascov in the district of Bardejov. Grandmother Mária took care of the household. Both families lived mainly from what they preserved and cultivated themselves and led an active social and religious life. The Second World War did not directly affect any of the families. During collectivization, they lost their land, forests and livestock, which they had to hand over to the cooperative. Grandma then worked at the Lascov Agricultural Cooperative until her retirement. After finishing school, both parents worked in the consumer cooperative Jednota, where they met, and got married in 1960. Eva started attending primary school in 1967, continued to grammar school and after graduation applied to the Faculty of Philosophy in Prešov. She graduated as a teacher in the field of history and Russian language and took up a teaching position in Bardejov. After two years, she went to Prague to join her husband Ján, who worked at the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In the years 1986-1989, she taught at two primary schools in Prague. In the summer of 1989, as the wife of the first secretary at the Czechoslovak Embassy, she went to the embassy in Bucharest, where in December 1989 she experienced the Romanian revolution. In the years 1991 – 1993, she was the director of the Elementary School at the Czechoslovak Embassy and taught Slovak and Czech children from the first to the fifth grade in a single class. She experienced the division of Czechoslovakia and the related division of the embassy while still in Romania. In the summer of 1993, he and his family returned to Slovakia. After spending two years in Bratislava, Eva‘s husband became the deputy ambassador in Paris in 1995 and the family went to France. In 2002, they returned to Romania again and stayed on this mission until 2007. Since returning to Slovakia, Eva has devoted herself to teaching.