Marta Čermáková

* 1930

  • "When I was forbidden to teach religion, they invited me to the regional national committee. And there, the secretary drilled me morning and afternoon with one thing. To sign that I was going for health reasons, that I wasn't being fired. And I didn't sign. But it's only now, listening to the way things were going, that I realize that if I had signed it, I would have been considered a collaborator. So a lot of people who are on some list, for example, don't even have anything to do with it. Some people don't, I can't say. But I do know that when he went out to lunch, he let me out, and he still invited me in the afternoon and he was humming to me that afternoon. All the time. He told me that if I didn't sign, I'd never be able to teach religion."

  • "Levínská Olešnice borders the border area. It was tense there. A kind of memory, which is interesting, is that when they occupied, I remember exactly when the soldiers came, when Munich was on, so how they came back, how they were disbanded, they came home. They were all crying, but they knew it wouldn't have been possible otherwise. So that was kind of the weight of it. Then they were closing the border area and the road just ended next to us, we couldn't go any further. By Stara Paka it was already German, but not all of it, just the station. Just beyond Levínská Olešnica was the border, there were German soldiers guarding it. And when they were making the stakes, marking out the border, there was a farmer at the end of the village who, when he saw that they had taken a piece of his field, thought it was a pity, so he went at night, took out the stakes, and adjusted it a bit to his liking. He didn't want to give them his, and let them have that."

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    Dvůr Králové nad Labem

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    délka: 58:42
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Materially we are high, we can do many things. But morally and spiritually we are backward

Marta Čermáková in front of the church - photo from her youth
Marta Čermáková in front of the church - photo from her youth
zdroj: Archive of Marta Čermáková

Sister Marta Čermáková was born on July 27, 1930 in the village of Bystrá nad Jizerou near Semily and at the age of four she moved with her family to nearby Levínská Olešnice. She perceived the tense atmosphere during the days of the Munich Agreement, as a result of which Levínská Olešnice became a border village. After the war, she decided to follow the spiritual path and became a nun. After the communists forcibly liquidated the Christian orders in 1950, the memoirist had to officially stop teaching religion. However, she continued to teach in the families.