"And every now and then... that's what the neighbours said to grandma: 'They've been asking about you again.' And my dad met a friend who worked at Geoindustria in the Ore Mountains and he said, 'Then move to the Ore Mountains, you'll have peace there.' So basically he worked in the Ore Mountains until he retired and only came home on weekends, I mean, I was used to it, it doesn't occur to a man, you live in a certain environment and consider it normal, but only when I was an adult and had my own children did I realize that it wasn't normal. Because I only had my father, my mother died, and I was raised by my grandfather and grandmother, and my father only came on weekends and left for those Ore Mountains on Sunday evening or Monday morning."
“As my mom died when I was only three years old, me and my father, we could never travel to see his sister together, the other always stayed here as a hostage, so it would be me and my grandmother and then again at most once every two years, it wasn't possible every year, so we never spent any vacation together, or in fact my school holidays.”
"When the Second World War broke out, because my grandfather, his father, was an ardent Masaryk and a member of Sokol, it was assumed that, of course, that my father would volunteer for England in the Czech Air Force. Well, our family didn't talk about it much at home, because back in the 1950s there was not much speech freedom, so these are the kind of scraps that I sometimes learned by chance, that, for example, my father applied as a recruit when he was seventeen, but it wasn't possible because he wasn't of legal age, so they had to wait a year, and when they flew for him, they simply had to go back because the Germans were shelling them, so it only worked out the second time. And then he once told me that when they landed at that airport, when he got off, the lawn was all covered with four-leaf clovers."
Eva Bártová was born on December 13, 1951 in Prague. Her father fought in World War II as a pilot in England, and his family remained in Sweden. Because of this, he was bullied by the communist regime and later found a job in the Ore Mountains, where he had more peace. Eva‘s mom died when she was three years old, and Eva grew up mainly with her grandparents. Once every two years she could visit her relatives in Sweden. She learned and worked with laboratory equipment. She had two children. Eva Bártová died on February 10, 2023.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
