Eva Kiedrońová

* 1941

  • „When the Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD) ended, they still managed to cut down and sell half of our forest. We didn't even know about it. Only branches remained. I didn't even know until I found out by chance from a neighbor, who had a forest next to ours. I told her I had to go to the woods for branches. It was before the holidays, before Christmas, and she told me, 'You have a lot of branches there! You've got it cut down there. Go there.'' Good that my father didn't live to see it. We did not receive any compensation. When we wanted them to compensate us, they told us that they had replaced the trees with seedlings, which were said to be more expensive than the value of the wood. Who would believe that?“

  • „Children who once spoke a dialect in families and went to Polish school remained speaking a dialect. In addition, they spoke Polish and Czech, because the Czech language was taught from about the third grade. Children from my generation who spoke a dialect at home and with other children, but went to a Czech school, usually no longer speak it. I will be honest. It was quite cruel, but so it was that teachers from Czech schools told parents not to talk to their children in ponašymu (the Cieszyn Silesian dialect), since their Czech would be worse. Some parents, who wanted their child to speak Czech well, stuck to it. Other generations of parents from Czech schools, or from ethnically mixed marriages, no longer speak the dialect. Now the situation is that the dialect is no longer a common language. Those who went to a Czech school seem to be ashamed of the dialect, but we are proud to speak it and on top of it we know Polish and Czech.“

  • „All his life my father was unhappy about having signed up to join the Unified Agricultural Cooperative (JZD). It didn't bother him that he worked, but it did bother him that he couldn't work on his own. He wanted to be a private individual, that's what he enjoyed. We always heard, 'And I was to emigrate to Canada in 1936 like my sister did. I would have a farm there.' It was a misery for him. He really wanted them to go then, but my mother who had a small daughter, Helenka, saw it differently. She didn't want to go anywhere with small children. Everything was fine until the agricultural cooperative started. And so he always said, 'If we went, that would have been good, we would have a farm.'“

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Ostrava, 07.06.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:07:45
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
  • 2

    Ostrava, 15.06.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:37:48
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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Since joining the cooperative my father had been worried that he couldn‘t work on his own

Eva Sikorová, after marriage Kiedrońová / around 1960
Eva Sikorová, after marriage Kiedrońová / around 1960
zdroj: Archive of Eva Kiedrońová

Eva Kiedrońová, born as Sikorová, was born on February 26 1941 in a mountain settlement in Návsí in the Těšín Beskydy Mountains. She is one of five children. Her parents farmed on a medium-sized plot of land with seven hectares of fields. During World War II, when Cieszyn (Těšínsko) was occupied by the German Empire, the family faced the pressure of Germanization. In 1942, the Nazis expelled them from their farm due to their Polish nationality and appointed a German family from Bessarabia to the farm. The parents and eldest son were deported to perform forced labor in Germany. The witness’ grandmother took care of her and the rest of the siblings. After the war, the parents restored the family farm. Until 1957 they resisted pressure from the Communists to join a unified agricultural cooperative. The witness graduated from a pedagogical college and taught mathematics and chemistry at Polish schools in the region until her retirement. She promoted the local history, traditions and dialect. She lived in her hometown, with the exception of three war years. After the fall of the totalitarian regime, the family got the fields and the forest back.