Ing. Zora Zemene

* 1926

  • "In the spring of 1968 I went to work for the Rovnost newspaper because they came to persuade me to work for them, that the newspaper needed me. Rovnost was a Communist daily, but it was a good daily. Except for the people who were committed arrogant Communists, the others weren't so bad. And I had a science and technology column. So I didn't feel bad there, because for example: somebody invented something in the world and I could write about it because it was expertise. For example, the Dalešice dam, the Hodonín spa, several things like that, which I covered with proper journalism. And then DNA acid was invented, and it came from outside. I read this brochure somewhere, it was the Institute of Biophysics in Brno, and I went there, I didn't know anybody there, I went there and I said, 'Excuse me, I read about this, but I don't know anything about it. Would you be so kind and explain me what is it for, why is it there and so on. But you have to talk to me like a first grader, because I know nothing about it. And the manager was a really nice man and he took the time to show me everything. He explained it all in detail to me, and I wrote a big article about it, and I won recognition as a journalist. I wasn't an active communist, my only involvement was the party newspaper Rovnost. It might sound as an excuse, but there were a lot of us like that. Except for the one who had to write about what was new in Communism and how good and honest it was. But the others didn't have to do this because they had their columns."

  • "We were in the dugout shelter, where they stored the potatoes. That's how potatoes used to be stored in Slovakia, in poor families who were small farmers. They stored potatoes and vegetables from the frost. And we hid there – everyone who could, and Malinovsky's army was waking above us, it was something terrible. Our father sacrificed himself, there's no other way to put it. He said: 'I'll stay out, because the women have to hide underground.' So there were about 20 of us from that village. So this was the situation during the liberation by Malinovsky's army."

  • "The Germans were coming. I didn't want to leave my mother, but there was nothing else to do, because they could possibly kill me. But my mother – as an elder woman – seemed to be safe. So all I took was a coat, a scarf and a knife. I kept that knife in my house until recently. And we ran far away so we wouldn't get caught. They were already shooting at us from behind. We were running and walking day and night. Then we had a rest somewhere on a meadow. But as we were walking and people in the villages saw us - because the villages were not so far away one from each other - so whoever wanted to, they took us in, so that we could at least sleep and eat there. We had nothing. Fortunately, I spoke German, so I knew where the Germans were. And I could interpret it. But I was scared. I wanted to get to Bratislava, I wanted to get home. Because my dad was there and I didn't know who else. My sister was in Martin with my grandmother, my mother was in the hospital. And this took, I don't understand, because the attack was on 24 August. And I came home to Bratislava on 4 December - exhausted, devastated and dirty. I can't explain to myself today where I was all that time, I was nowhere, I slept and ate. I don't understand how it could have lasted four months."

  • "I went to school with Jewish girls, and then I remember that when it came to Jews, they were not allowed to walk on the pavements. They were kicked out of school, they were not allowed to walk on the main paths. There was an asphalt path and a grass one next to it, so they were allowed to walk only on the grass, not on the asphalt path. Then I also witnessed one or two transports when there were such big crowds of Jews with suitcases. But I can't remember now when and where this happened. I can see it, but I don't know when and where it was. We knew some of the people, but nobody knew what was going to happen to them. They thought they were being taken somewhere, but they had no idea what was to come."

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    Brno, 15.04.2021

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We were communists only on paper, not in our beliefs

Zora Zemene in1949
Zora Zemene in1949
zdroj: Archiv pamětnice

Zora Zemene, née Hedánková, was born on 19 May 1926 in Turčiansky Svätý Martin (since 1950 Martin) in the Žilina Region. In her childhood she repeatedly met T. G. Masaryk, who spent holidays in the vicinity of the town. During the war she attended the grammar school in Martin. During the violence that accompanied the Slovak National Uprising, she hid in the forests for a long time. She spent the rest of the war with her parents in Bratislava. During the liberation, she hid with her mother and other women in a dugout shelter in the village of Svätý Jur near Bratislava. After the Second World War she studied journalism in Prague. During her studies, she joined the Social Democratic Party, and after its merger with the Communist Party in 1948, she remained a member of the Communist Party until the Velvet Revolution. After her studies, she moved to Brno with her husband, RNDr. Leopold Zemene, where she held a number of journalistic positions - at Lidové noviny, the university magazine Universitas and the party newspaper Rovnost. Before her retirement in the early 1980s, she worked at the Brno radio station. In retirement, she established cooperation with CK Cedok travel agency, thanks to which she visited many Western countries during the previous regime. Her trips to the West also provoked the Secret Police (StB). Zora Zemene lived through the Velvet Revolution in Brno, where she was still living at the time of the interview (2021).