Magda Konvalinová

* 1957

  • “I didn't know... even... what Christmas was. My grandmother, she went to church, she was religious I would say, but my parents weren't that much into it, but they knew, they knew the basics, about religion. Bid I didn't know a thing. I even thought... It was only after the Revolution when I found out that on Christmas Eve Jesus Christ's birthday is being celebrated. And when I asked my mother, why didn't they tell me that... As we always... At school we were always told that Christmas was a holiday of peace, and as we had this Christmas dinner I wondered why my parent were acting so solemnly. They were like... I didn't like it, as I didn't know the reason. So every time I was quite glad when Christmas was over. And when I asked my mother why didn't they explain that to me, she told me that I should have figured that out. How could I have had figured that out? I saw this Nativity Scene in church and I thought it was just some kind of decoration.”

  • “The worst part was, as I was getting married, my husband... he was from a Communist family, and we had been living in Tábor, and they were from the same place, from Chýnov near Tábor, and later, they moved to Tábor as well. And he told me, I was maybe seventeen years old, so I learned from him... All of a sudden, he just told me: 'Your father was in jail.' And I was quite surprised by that and I didn't know what to do. So I didn't even ask my parents. Like never. And I kept thinking, that they locked him up because... As I knew my father well, he was a decent man... So I kept thinking that maybe he might have caused some accident, you know, that's what I was thinking. But I didn't have the courage to go home and tell them. Which was another mistake I made. Every time I was told that one has to endure everything. And because of that, as I applied for a school of agriculture, as I wanted to study, I hadn't been admitted, of course, because... I did good in school and I passed the exams but I hadn't been admitted... But no one told me anything, just my parents said: 'We can't do anything about it.' And they told me that my father couldn't be a Party member. As it was known that children of the Communist party members had no problem being admitted. So that was how they... And then I finally gave up, still not knowing why the things were the way they were.”

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    České Budějovice, 02.12.2019

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Every time I was told that one has to endure everything

Magda Konvalinová, a portrait
Magda Konvalinová, a portrait
zdroj: archív pamětnice

Magda Konvalinová, née Bláhová, was born on July 18th 1957 in Pacov. Both her parents came from families of farmers, her father was born on a farm in Lhota near Písek and her mother in Horní Světlá near Pacov. After they got married, they had been serving as seasonal labourers on both farms, so as a child, Magda Konvalinová had been moving frequently. She started elementary school in 1963 in Tábor, then applying for a school of agriculture where she wasn‘t admitted despite her excellent study results. She couldn‘t understand that, as well as why she had been bullied by some of the teachers at the elementary school. At the age of seventeen, she found at least, under quite unpleasant a humiliating circumstances, that her father had been in prison. At the same time, she also learned quite a new word: ‚kulak‘. Her parents, probably fearing the consequences, kept refusing to give her the explanation. Due to that, she had been feeling guilty of something she didn‘t do and she couldn‘t even identify for the greater part of her childhood and early adulthood. As late as after 1989, she found documents regarding her father‘s imprisonment in the early 50s while going through her late grandmother‘s estate. After that, she started to make some connections. According to her father‘s investigation files from the Security Services Archive he had been creating and distributing leaflets mocking the Communist regime. However, due to her grandmother‘s testimony, these materials had been planted on him in order to harm the Bláha family which had been refusing to join the agricultural coop. Despite that, they had been resisting the pressure till 1963, willingly facing all the consequences. In 1990, Magda Konvalinová got back all the fields and buildings her family had been dispossessed of, she returned to the farm and begun its reconstruction.