Eva Kodadová

* 1944

  • "That was terrible for my mother. We had it divided at home, I was my father's favourite and my brother was my mother's. My mother had a heart attack, then she had a second heart attack and died of a third. She took it very hard. Especially the inability to connect. Who had a phone back then? Nobody can imagine that today. My mother had a friend who worked in telecommunications, who secretly put her in touch with my brother once a month, so she could at least hear him. My mother really took it hard. My father was kind of taciturn, low-key, but of course he took it hard too. I didn't know he wanted to leave. We had a group at our cottage at the beginning of the summer and his wife got drunk. We had an outdoor fireplace, and she was climbing on it, and she kept trying to tell us something. My brother dragged her down the chimney and she had to go to bed. And I think she wanted to tell us, today I think it was that."

  • "I still remember as a young woman, when I finished work, I would stand in line and never know what I was going to bring home. I started at the butcher shop with the idea of buying chops, then buying minced, and always ended up with fatback. When oranges came, we knew that at the clinic, but by the time we got to town, we couldn't get them. So, it was still a scarce commodity. You had to have friends. Kind of the bribery thing. Not to give money to somebody, but to get something, some quid pro quo. I think it demoralized the nation. There were always shortages, once it was toilet paper, then sanitary towels, shortages of good meat and fruit. There was always something missing."

  • "Anyway, when I finished the eighth grade, I just knew I was going to go to college, to study Egyptology. So, I applied to grammar school, passed the entrance exam. I went with the school to harvest the hop and after maybe ten days I saw from the hop garden that my father had arrived and that he was seriously talking to the cantors. I didn't know what about. I was afraid that something had happened to my brother or my mother, God forbid that they had died. The cantor came for me and my father took me away. In the car he explained that I couldn't go to this school, which I couldn't understand at all. He must have had some connections, so I got into the medical school in Most. It happened that the district committee of the Party, which was based next door to us, found out that I was enrolled in the grammar school, and that morning they expelled me. My father worked at the Lobkowicz mines and that was the reason, I think."

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    Ústí nad Labem, 31.05.2022

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The scarcity of goods under socialism demoralised the nation

Eva Kodadová at work in the Mining Hospital with Polyclinic in 1975
Eva Kodadová at work in the Mining Hospital with Polyclinic in 1975
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Eva Kodadová, née Stránská, was born on 6 June 1944 in Teplice. Her father Václav was the director of the Lobkowicz mines. Her mother Markéta, of a Polish nationality, was a shop assistant. The family lived in Bílina. After finishing elementary school, the witness entered the local grammar school. However, after a few weeks she was dismissed from there for political reasons and transferred to the secondary medical school in Most. It was a great shock for Eva. During her travels to Most she met her future husband Jiří Kodad. Eva graduated in 1962 and two years later married Jiří. She worked first at the hospital in Most, and later in Teplice. In 1964, her son Jiří was born. In order to place him in kindergarten, she had to join the company Inženýrské pozemní stavby. She then returned to the health sector and worked as a nurse in the Mining Hospital with a polyclinic in Bílina. In 1972 the couple had their second son Daniel. Eva Kodadová hated Russians from her youth, which was intensified by August 1968. In 1984, her brother Petr emigrated to the USA, her mother did not survive his departure. In 1990, Eva became the head nurse at the Mining Hospital and Polyclinic in Bílina. From 1999 she was a pioneer of home health care, where she served as head nurse until 2011, when she retired. In 2022, she was living in Bílina.