Jarmila Koslovská

“I understood later, mum was afraid and did not want me to be a Sister. I did not know why because she was religious. Later I understood that she was afraid that I would not stay there. She told me: 'How can you promise to be obedient when you are so disobedient. You do not obey anyone; you do everything your way.' I told her that I did not obey the comrades and that I did not accept their philosophy. But that I would obey people who would lead me according to God´s law and according to the gospel because that would teach me what I believed in and what I wanted to believe in and to understand it better. Mum was afraid and she thought that if I wore the habit and then was not able to cope with the obedience that I would return home and it would be a shame. She was accommodating and everything, but she never showed her feelings and she saw that I was doing what I wanted and all of a sudden that I would obey someone in a monastery. She could not imagine how it could work.”

“I was older than all my schoolmates. They knew that I had already worked in a hospital, so I had authority and they elected me class chairwoman. I persuaded them that we would not be at the May Day Parade, that we would have to arrive on Sunday and that it would be a waste of a free day. I did not say it because of political reasons. They obeyed me and we did not arrive for the parade. The headmistress than wanted to talk to the class chairwoman. She sent for me, I went there, and she asked if I knew who had made other girls not to go to the parade. And so I told her that it was me who had persuaded them. That I did not consider it important to walk at the meaningless parade. She already knew that I was religious and asked me who had made me believe that God exists. I told her: Mrs. Headmistress it was for example you because you fight against God. After all, if he did not exist, you would not fight against him. It would not make sense. She was an educated woman, graduated historian.”

“Mum got to know that I was a Sister only when I came home which was in February before revolution. My mum´s sister died at that time and I came to the funeral. Mum did not let me come in.” - “She did not let you come in?” - “She did not want to accept me in the habit and so on. But she liked me, I do no doubt it. She just could not handle it.” - “And did it get better with your mum at home?” - “Two years later my grandpa - her dad died. I came again to attend the funeral and the priest who conducted the service had known my grandpa from grammar school, he had been his schoolmate. He spoke of his life and of the fact that both had chosen a different life path and that Karel Machala had gotten married and had had five children and that his granddaughter who was a Sister was kneeling over his grave and that it was sure that her mother was pleased about her daughter being a Sister. We were then walking from the cemetery and I asked my mum if she was happy that I was a Sister. And my mum accepted me only at that moment, over her father´s grave.”

“Before it, Pope John Paul II was elected and was supposed to visit Poland for the first time in May 1979. We could not get there at that time. They blocked everyone. Simply everyone who wanted to go to Poland had to have a certain amount of money. We had passports and passes. We agreed on going to Poland with a friend from school and with a Sister. I had a distant relative in Poland, we called her aunt Čopka. We were living in Šilheřovice and there is the Czech-Polish border - Šilheřovice - Chalupky. I went to see her to ask her if she would send me a telegram that she had died and that I would go to her funeral. So, she sent it to me. She was such a wonderful woman. And I went with it to the authority and we were given money for the funeral. And like this the three of us set off to Poland. We did not know where Holy Father was or where he would be, where he would begin or anything else. Everything was a secret. We came to my aunt and she said that she did not know either and she sent us to a parish office in Zabelkow and Mr. priest started to take care of us, and he told us that Holy Father would be in Warsaw. We found out that although we had been given some money, it would not be enough not even for a train journey or other things. So that I should go sleep and that he would come for us in the morning and take us to Katowice to the station. He took us to the station and gave us money for the ticket and for the return ticket. He gave us an address of some monks and we got to Holy Father´s proximity. When it was Communion, only people who had been given little pieces of paper could come close to him. Those people could receive Communion from Holy Father. Because I was a person who always needed to push through, I got there even though I did not have the little piece of paper. The Sisters covered me. I made it directly to him. I received Communion and said Czechoslovakia instead of amen. I was so happy that I got there.”

“At that time, I negotiated with the Charity if they were going to hire me or not. Mrs. Prchlíková was a secretary or a female deputy of Mr. headmaster, I don´t know but she negotiated with me. I had a kind of an interview and she wanted to know why I had always worked where the Sisters had been. I explained it to her by saying that I knew the Sisters, that they worked well and dutifully and that I wanted to learn it from them. That is why I had worked with them. She asked me if I was a secret Sister. I was not at that time so I could say it with a clear conscience. I had not even entered the novitiate yet. After that, she started to offer me that if they hired me if I would give them information about the Sisters - what they were doing, who they were meeting. That I would have a nice salary for that. However, I told her that I did not need it and that I would not do it.”