Anežka Stránská

* 1925

  • „There was a whole world meeting of the superiors in Rome. So they invited me several times and they never let me go. So I went to the ministry of culture (to Prague – editor´s note) once and said, you need to give it to me in writing. I need to let them know in Rome, htat you have a reason not to… But they didn’t give me anything, but said, so we´ll let you go, but you´ll be checked when you came back, be warned. I said well you don’t need to worry, I have no intention to do any harm to our republic. And they wanted to shake hands, and I said, I would not do that nor promise anything, I only promise to god. I took sister Augustina too, as she knew languages and when we went there, they checked us, suitcases and all. Well everything was all right. We came back and our suitcases… well those were just small cases, nothing much, just a small... they got lost completely, apparently. We travelled on plane. So we came back to Prague, they let everyone go, but us. I asked what was going on, if they were going to check us or what was on. They said, well you didn’t get your luggage or your stuff. So they called us separately and asked where we were and so on. Some secretary, a man and a woman were there, in civil clothes, but were acting decently. So we flew in on Friday, and nothing happened, and on Tuesday we were supposed to came back for our luggage, that they´d call somewhere. And they called us already on Monday to come to pick our stuff up, immediately. Well it was… sister had many papers, magazines in foreign languages. Well… and then her notes with all languages, she could speak many. So they had no clue what it actually was. And I had a few notes there, Czech and German, or Italian just a few words. That was all, we had nothing else in there, just a few necessities, clothes for personal use… Well when they looked through it, there was nothing… and they claimed they found them in three or four days...“

  • „They liked us a lot there and it was good there in a hospital. There was good work, but we didn’t go voting. So they cleared us. Why didn’t you vote? We didn’t go, as… First we went, those were the first elections, they said, it was our elections, Czech ones and there will be our people there and they are Czechs, so we voted for them. And then, as they behaved like that, we knew what was going on. They took the mother and sentenced her to ten years, so we didn’t believe them, so we didn’t go again. The hospital director came and begged us, sisters, please go for my family, please go and vote. So we said we´d go but we put there no votes, but normal pieces of paper. Well do as you like, but please go voting. So we marched in there at half past seven in the evening, fifty nuns went voting. And of course we put white and blue papers in our envelopes and they punished us for it. They said we should go to a kind of a senior home and it was a social care institution called Pod Doubravkou. It was a collecting camp of Germans to start with, they were about four hundred. Then they divided them and kept those who were all right. And put our people there, but from a hospital, who could not, or didn’t want to work, or those who could not get healed. Many people were dying there, so they placed us there. We were separated there, just us alone. As we didn’t vote, no priest could come to us, but they did anyway… One was a service man, more or less, he´d come to see us, an educated many, a Dominican, knew many languages and had a brother, a priest, and his sister came there, she had nowhere else to go. So that was good, so we has a small secret mass early in the morning, at five or so.“

  • „To deserve our food, they brought us to the field. We went collecting potatoes. Right in autumn, as they brought us here already in 1945, well it was after right war, so the younger ones, we went to the field collecting potatoes. And did similar work. And then some sisters could not work, so they were bringing onions from the Fruty here in Brno and we´d peel the layers off and pickle the small ones and garlic too. And we also helped them, the ones who could knit sweaters to Tuzex. Awfully small patterns, such slinky wool it was, a kimono, long sleeves, and we earned terribly low wages, so the sisters, who went to the field, were feeding us. It was very demanding, we worked from an early morning until eleven at night. And there was a deadline they gave us. It was quite a tyranny. They were reading us so that it didn’t feel that long. Even with the onions we actually preferred making the sweaters… those were sold for a lot of money later.“

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    Domov Matky Rósy, Rajhrad, 15.04.2014

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Staying true to what a man chooses to do. God sees my steps and protects me!

Sister Bonifácie in 2014
Sister Bonifácie in 2014

Anežka Stránská was born on 28th December, 1922 in Dalečín in Vysočina. Later there were also two brothers together with her and an older sister. The parents were guiding their children to faith. Anežka went to school in Jimramov about six kilometres far from home. At the age of seventeen she left for a cloister in Rajhrad to the Congregation of the Consolatory Sisters of the Jesus Heart and accepted her religious name Bonifácie. That was already in 1939. During war she was active together with other sisters in Brno. The Sisters visited ill people in Czech and German families. At the end of was they returned to the cloister in Rajhrad. After war they helped those, who wished to emigrate. Their mother superior, Marie Vintrová, was sentenced by the communist regime for this activity in a construed process to seventeen years in prison. Other sisters were then moved to Teplice in Bohemia, where she worked in a hospital. In 1950s fifty sisters all threw clean papers into an election urn, they transferred them to a ruined formed collection camp Pod Doubravkou. All local priests were forbidden to serve holy mass for the sisters under the threat of loss of state approval. Until 1980s the sisters were closely observed by the secret police and by the church secretaries. The sister Bonifácie lives in Rajhrad.