Seven Generations From Continent to Continent: More Sad Than Happy

By Sulinka Silonova

The life of seven generations is an incredibly interesting process to write about. I have discovered that each generation went thorough more hard and sad times than happy times. Wars, hunger, constant moving to find a better place, and then I figured out that no one from the generation could escape hardship. There was always a wish and hope for better times. My dear mom always said that life is not easy, and I learned that very early in my life, but who is to say that life has to always be so hard? In each generation there was a handful of times when they were able to say that they were happy. I cried many times writing this book for all the pain that had to be felt by so many people. I know that each and every person cherished those happy moments and hoped they would last longer then they did. Life goes on, and I hope for all the generations that will come after me that they will have a happy life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tellwell Talent
• Release date: Nov 18, 2022
• ISBN: 9780228862277

Sulinka Silonova

Sexual abuse is an act that will haunt that person's whole life. It will never be forgotten. The hardest part of it is when there is nobody to see it happening, even if it is happening right under their nose. Running from place to place, country to country is also very hard, because most of the time you do not find what you hoped for and run again.I want to say to all that the saying "when you have been abused, you will be an abuser too" is not always true. My personal thinking is that kindness will give you a calm and happy feeling.People deserve happy time and kind people around them, not abusers. That is my wish for this book: to be some comfort to those who have suffered.

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Seven Generations from Continent to Continent

Copyright © 2022 by Sulinka Silonova

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Tellwell Talent

www.tellwell.ca

ISBN

978-0-2288-6228-4 (Paperback)

978-0-2288-6227-7 (eBook)

Dedication

I dedicate this book to all people, but most of all to children who are going through (or have gone through) similar situations to the ones I have faced. I just hope that you have someone who will hold your hand when you need it the most. That is what was―and still is―missing in my life.

I wrote this book for my whole family, so that they come to know that there is more to life than always criticizing others or hating people because they are not like you. I also wrote it for some of my friends who think that if I do not agree with them, they can cut me out of their lives. Maybe little bit more love in your hearts will do you good.

If I have offended anyone by writing this book, I am sorry! Some of you hurt me a lot, and I want you to know just how much.

Love always, your daughter, sister, mother, aunt, and grandmother.

Sulinka N.K.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dedication

Introduction

Chapter 1: Meet My Great-Grandparents

Chapter 2: Meet My Grandmother

Chapter 3: Meet My Grandfather

Chapter 4: Life in Yugoslavia

Chapter 5: Jiri’s Parents (My Other Grandparents)

Chapter 6: New Life Without Jiri

Chapter 7: No Place to Live Again

Chapter 8: Wonderful Brother, Terrible Stepfather

Chapter 9: Jara and Nadia Begin and End

Chapter 10: Franta’s Friends

Chapter 11: The Healer

Chapter 12: Jara and Nadia Begin Again

Chapter 13: Meet Mark, My First Son

Chapter 14: Meet Mart, My Second Son

Chapter 15: Back to Camp

Chapter 16: Sleepless Nights With Mart

Chapter 17: The Love of My Life

Chapter 18: Leaving Czechoslovakia

Chapter 19: My Beloved Mom Comes For Good

Chapter 20: My New Sister-in-law

Chapter 21: Home Again

Chapter 22: The Aftermath

Summary

Introduction

My family’s history begins in 18th century, and it is more sad than happy. At that time, the Turkish army wanted to conquer part of Yugoslavia. They wanted everything—animals, lands, and the beautiful Alps as well as everything on the mountains. They tried hard to take it but had no victory. The Yugoslavian people are strong; they will fight to the death to protect their people and country.

The Yugoslavian province of Slovenia is where my story of seven generations starts. Aljančič is our family name. When I started writing this book, I did not know that we had a family crest. This crest was given to Bartolomej Aljančič by Karl I (Emperor of Austria, King of Hungary, King of Bohemia) on November 30, 1917. It was received by Bartolomej on February 28, 1918, when he was already retired from the army, where he was very successful.

Bartolomej Aljančič was most likely the brother of my great-great-grandfather Alija Aljančič. Alija Aljančič was a Turkish officer who loved Slovenia and the little village Kovor, where he decided to stay after the occupation of Yugoslavia. He was the first member of our family as far back as I can trace. I do not know much about him except that he started our family lineage in Kovor, and that is where we all came from.

For hundreds of years Alija’s descendants lived in peace with the Slovenian people, which is how my family got their name. Turkish ‘Alija’ and Slovenien ‘čič’ make the perfect Yugoslavian last name—Aljančič.

Aljančič Family Crest

Chapter 1: Meet My Great-Grandparents

The first person I wish to talk about is Ivan Aljančič, my great-great-grandfather, who married Maria Kristanova, my great-great-grandmother. Ivan was born December 21, 1881, in Kovor. He grew up with his two brothers, who moved to Vienna, the capital city of Austria, when they were adults.

Ivan and Maria had three sons: Bartolomej, Andrej and Tomas Aljančič. Tomas Aljančič was my great-grandfather. When Tomas was 21 years old, he had to go into the army. The army sent him to Vienna where his father’s brothers were. In those times, not anyone could be a soldier. Soldiers had to be at least 190 centimetres tall to ride the horses they had to use to travel. Tomas was tall enough. He was exactly what the army was looking for.

As a soldier, Tomas was busy all week. His only day off was Sunday. Most of the time when he was not working, he would just wander through town and parks. He missed the mountains of Kovor and his friends. One Sunday, Tomas noticed a young girl sitting on a bench in the park. She was nice looking girl, he thought. The next Sunday, she was there again … and on the third Sunday she looked at him and asked, Would you like to sit down? He did, and that is how he met my great-grandmother, Laura Dvorakova.

Laura was born January 24, 1884. She was from the Czech Republic, but she was working in Vienna as a caretaker. She was from family of 11 children. Seven of the children were born before their father went into army training, and the last four after that. I do not know the names of first seven, but last four were Tonicka, Laura, Josef and Otta.

Laura did not have a very nice childhood. Her father, Josef Dvorak, was a shoemaker who did not make much money, and what he did make he spent on alcohol. His wife, Anna Dvorakova, was often sad because the food she made for her 11 children was generally eaten by their father before the kids could get any.

Anna Dvorakova worked hard, both at home and on neighbouring farms, to put food on the table for her children. The kids worked too; older kids picked fruit in the woods, while others watched the farmers’ animals in the fields. Sometimes the kids got bread or potatoes for doing excellent work. Anna Dvorakova was a devoted mother who did what she could for her kids, working hard to keep them alive. She had just them; her husband had nothing to do with his family. He did not care for them.

Around the year 1890, the world got crazy, and many people started moving to America. Josef and Anna talked to their four oldest daughters, urging them to take a chance and go too. If you go, you will be able to help the family at home by sending money, they said.

The girls were sad about being asked to go. They thought, they do not love us. They did not want to go, but there was no arguing with their parents. In those times, whatever the parents decided had to be done by their kids. Josef and Anna borrowed money for tickets, and their four oldest girls reluctantly left for a new continent. Before they left, however, the oldest one told them, You pushed us out of our home and our country; you will never hear from us!

Originally, the four girls had tickets for the Titanic, but one of the sisters was late and so they missed the boat by one hour and had to wait for next boat going to America. The three sisters who were on time were not happy with their late sister, but it was not her fault that she missed the Titanic. She had to come all the way from Vienna, and her train was late. At that time, they did not know how lucky they were.

The next boat to sail for America was the Queen Mary, and all four of them reached America with no problem; however, they remained angry and stuck to their word. None of them ever wrote a letter to their parents.

Anna, their mother, knew she and Josef had made a mistake sending them away, and soon realized they would not get any money from their daughters. In fact, sending them away made things worse for Anna because she had to pay back the money she and Josef had borrowed for the tickets for the four girls, and so she had to work much harder than before.

Like always, Josef did not care that Anna missed her girls or was overburdened with work. He paid no attention to Anna and her problems. My great-great-grandfather Josef Dvorak died in 1896. His wife Anna’s date of death is unknown.

After her four sisters left for America, my great-grandmother Laura continued to live in the family home with Josef and Anna. When Laura was nine years old, her parents took her to a faraway farm to work. Laura was a tiny little girl with not much strength, but she tried to do as much as possible to make the farmer and his family happy. However, the farmer was not good to her and so one day she escaped and went back home. When she got home, she pleaded with her parents to let her stay, promising them that she would eat just once a day. They let her stay and she kept her word. She helped around the house, and only ate at supper. She did that until she was 18 years old; when she was 18, she left her country and went to Vienna with her older sister Tonicka to work as a caretaker.

Eventually, Tonicka went back home to get married, leaving Laura alone in the city by herself. Two years later, Tonicka and her husband left the Czech Republic and went to America to meet the four older sisters who had emigrated at their parents’ request years earlier and who all lived in Los Angeles. At first Tonicka could not find them, but local police helped her. The last information I could find out about the four sisters was that they never married or had children. Tonicka and her husband, however, had one son and owned a few restaurants and hotels in Los Angeles. She died around 1959, though I don’t know the exact time or circumstances.

Tomas and Laura soon fell in in love. After few Sunday visits and many hours of talking, they decided that they wanted to spend their lives together. They got married in 1905 in a little village called Chrenovice by the town of Ledec nad Sazavou.

During that same year, on February 16, 1905, their first daughter Anda (named after Laura’s mother) was born. Two years later another daughter, Tonicka―named after Laura’s sister in America―arrived, but she died after short illness. The last child who came into this world from Tomas and Laura was my grandfather, Josef Aljančič. He was born on December 19, 1908. At that time Tomas and Laura lived in the north part of the Czech Republic.

Tomas and Laura moved a lot, and their kids spent most of their young lives at their grandma’s house in village called Jedla. Because Tomas and Laura were always looking for work, they did not have much time for their children. Life was hard back then; kids were taken care of by whoever was able to do it.

One day Tomas came to Laura with the idea that life would be better if they went go back to his country, Slovenia. Because his love for Laura would not let him go by himself, he asked Laura if she and kids would go with him. She agreed, and a month later they took the kids and went by train to Slovenia, which took many days. Once they reached Slovenia, they went to the town of Trzic, close to the city of Kovor.

Tomas knew that back home he would be able to find work for himself and most likely for Laura too. He was right; Tomas was Aljančič was related to most of the people living in Kovor. People helped the couple to find a place to live and they also helped them to find jobs at a fabric making factory, though it took 45 minutes of fast walking to get to their jobs.

One day Tomas visited Laura at her place of work, and he found her in tears. He asked what was wrong. She told him her boss was not nice to her, and that he had threatened her. Tomas had hot blood. He immediately went to talk to Laura’s boss. There was a fight, some yelling and smacking and a few moments after that Tomas was out of job.

Tomas was not worried; he said, We are here with our own people, and we are not going to be hungry. But it was not as easy as he thought it would be. Tomas worked here and there to earn money, doing anything people needed done and the family struggled. But the worst part of it was that he began going out with friends and getting a little bit drunk. Laura did not like that, and one day she had had enough. She took the kids, went back to Czechoslovakia, and she and the children moved in with her uncle and aunt in the village of Jedla.

It did not take that long for Tomas to come back from Slovenia to be together with his kids and wife again. He missed them too much to stay in Slovenia.

Laura’s uncle was a shoemaker. He made decent money, and he did not drink, but he always had a bottle of alcohol to greet his customers with. One day he noticed that his rum was getting low. Alarmed, he asked, What is happening with my rum? It is evaporating too fast!

He asked everybody in the house if they had been drinking it, but they all said ‘no’. Curious about what was happening, he decided to put another bottle out, but he glued it down with shoe glue to confuse the culprit. Well, he did not have to wait too long to find out what was happening to it. Laura’s small boy, my grandfather Josef, was the one who liked rum more than milk. Josef was three years old, but he was a handful. One day he got his father’s watches and broke them, just because he did not have anything better to do. Tomas loved his boy too much to beat him; he just told him not to do anything like that again.

Eventually, Tomas was called up by army to go back to Vienna for a couple of months. Laura took the kids and went to Libštát, in the Liberec Region of Czechoslovakia, and later to Košťálov, in the same region. She needed to be able to feed children, which is why there were moving all the time. She was by herself now and it was awfully hard because young Josef was a very temperamental child, and he did not want to stay home while Laura worked. He always ran around village, people did not like that.

Finally, Tomas came back from Vienna. Laura was so happy … but she soon found out that he’d had an accident there; he’d fallen from a horse and cracked his head, he was not well. Laura took him to hospital, but he did not want to stay there, he came back home. He did not want any treatments, he was not looking after himself, it appeared to Laura that he was losing his mind. Many times, he did not know what was happening around him, Laura did not know what to do. Tomas was only 28 years old; she did not want to lose him.

She wrote to his brother Bartolomej in Vienna and asked him if he could come to see Tomas. He came fast and he took Tomas to a sanatorium for soldiers in Vienna. However, it was too late for Tomas; he was extremely ill. He died, leaving Laura heartbroken. She loved Tomas very much and now she was alone, trying to raise her kids on her own. Laura loved him until the end of her life. There were never any other men in her life. I do not know the exact day Tomas died, but it was in the year 1912.

The kids grew up not remembering their father. They didn’t know how good a father he was, and how much he loved them. What they did know was that life without a father was not easy, especially at that time (the beginning of the 20th century).

Laura did not know what to do. She had to work 16 hours a day, as that is how many hours people worked then. Anna was six years old and in her first year of school, but Josef was only four, so he still had to remain at home, untended. Thinking maybe her mother could help, she wrote a letter asking if Anna would come. She did.

Once Grandma Anna Dvorakova came to stay, they had to move again to a bigger place. They found one, but it had only a dirt floor, they had to share it with mice, which ran on the floor all night long. Unfortunately, soon after that little Josef got sick with diphtheria, which was extremely dangerous to children. Grandma Anna and Laura tried everything possible to help him, but Josef did not get better. Eventually, Laura put Josef on her back and took him to another village to see a doctor. He gave Josef an injection, then came again the next day to give Josef another one. His life was saved, and Grandma Anna and Laura were so thankful.

Eventually, the family had to move again, this time to a town called Semily. At this point, Laura had to look after four people—her mother, herself and her two children—and so she was lucky she found a job very soon making thread for fabric in a factory.

Laura left the house every morning in the dark and came back every evening in the dark while Grandma Anna cared for the children. Josef loved his grandma. She was everything to him; she took him every morning to daycare and picked him up every afternoon.

Laura worked 12 to 16 hours per day and the kids saw their mom only on Sunday, when she did not have to work. Sunday was a special day for the family because that is when the baker came to the village with fresh buns and bread, which they would breakfast on as a family. Nothing smells better than fresh buns; that smell remained forever in young Josef’s mind.

For a while, life was stable for the family. Semily was a beautiful place, and they had a nice home. In front of their house was a creek full of fish, while behind the house were small mountains and a forest rich with fruit and mushrooms. Anna and Josef loved that place … until one day everything becomes confusing. All day they heard words they did not understand. One of the words was ‘mobilization’. Then they saw their mother Laura with a pale face. She was looking at the kids and praying. It was July 26th, 1914—the first day of World War I.

Once the war started, all the good things that had happened stopped. Laura lost her job, and the family became desperate as she began looking for any job to keep food on the table for kids, her mother and herself. Soon, with no bread, potatoes or anything else to eat, they began stealing from farmers and surviving only on what people gave them. Day after day it became harder and harder to survive. Laura sold everything they had. Hunger was knocking on the door and the kids were getting slimmer. Their clothes became big on them.

In 1916, Laura’s mother Anna died. That was especially hard for little Josef. Everyday when he went to school, he cried all the way, remembering the times when his grandma had walked with him. But perhaps Anna Dvorakova wasn’t completely gone. One day Laura woke up after a strange dream. In the dream, her mom told her to sell her wedding rings and go back to the village of Jedla. Laura decided it was more than a dream, and so she rented a horse carriage and driver, and the kids and she left to look for a better future in Jedla.

The dream turned out to be true. By 1917, they had much better life. The kids were both going to school in Jedla and after school they went to the woods to pick mushrooms and berries―like blueberries, raspberries and blackberries―to sell in the village market which they would sell the next morning before school. They gave the money they made to Laura, and she put it away for wintertime, when everything was much more expensive.

Unfortunately, the house in Jedla was not livable in the winter, and so in September they went back to the northern part of Czechoslovakia to stay in their own house. They returned to Jedla in the spring.

Josef was in the first grade when World War I ended. When the war was over, life slowly went back to normal. Factories opened again and more food became available, and so Laura did not have to move around so much to feed the kids. They stayed in their own house and did not go back to Jedla. Josef was almost 11 by then, and he was going to the woods every day to cut wood. They needed a lot of it because Laura was cooking on a wood stove, and they used wood to heat the house in winter. Josef liked that kind of work much better than school. Any time he could, he ran away from school with his friends to play in the wood. The outdoors was a boy’s Heaven.

Sometimes, Josef took his mother’s wooden bathtub to use as a boat with his friends in the river. The river was wild, and the boys loved it, but one day they hit a big stone and the bathtub split in pieces. Laura spanked Josef on the bum with a leather belt. She needed that tub. But Josef was less upset about the tub than about being hit. He did not cry because he was very stubborn; however, he was angry inside. He could not wait to be old enough to become an apprentice and leave the family home.

In the spring of 1924 when Josef turned 16, he started his first year of apprenticeship as a blacksmith. Laura went with Josef to meet his ‘master’, the man he would apprentice to. She liked the way he talked to his apprentices, and she was sure Josef would love working with the man.

Josef’s new master gave Josef room in the attic where he lived with a student older than him. It was new place, a new experience … new everything. On the first night, poor Josef could not get to sleep for a long time … and when he finally did, he was soon woken by an alarm clock. It was 3:30 in the morning, they had to get up and get ready for work.

To Josef’s surprise, instead of learning how to be a blacksmith, the apprentices were sent to a barn where 10 cows were waiting to be fed and have their stalls cleaned. Everything was done by hand at that farm, even cutting grass. They had to haul it in by hand with no tractor. It seemed that the ‘master’ was thinking, why should I use a tractor and gas when the kids can do it?

There was no specific work schedule; the rule was simply that if it was nice weather, they worked in the fields and if it was rainy the master taught them blacksmithing. Josef soon learned the ropes. It was not a perfect situation, but at least he could not complain about the food at his new job. They ate a lot, and it was very good food too.

Josef was young, and he also needed some relaxation. On some Sundays, he had a chance to play soccer with boys from the village. That was Josef’s favourite time, though the master and other workers did not like that. When he came back in the evening, they let him know that they were not happy with him, because others had worked all day. But Josef was following the Bible. No work on Sunday!

Josef had a friend not too far from where he was staying. His friend had it much worse than Josef. His boss was cruel, cheap and a womanizer. Most of the time he forgot that he had not fed his student, and it was becoming normal that Josef’s friend was often without food for two days at a time. Josef felt deeply sorry for his friend. At night he went to his friend’s place and gave him his afternoon snack, mostly bread with margarine—but that was more than his friend ever got at his own workplace. The friend did not finish his apprenticeship. He lost so much weight that he decided to go back home. Josef was left alone again.

One day Josef sent a letter to Laura and told her about all problems he had at the farm, and that he was more farmer than blacksmith. He told her that the only way he could have any time off was if he escaped for half a day, and then he had to pay for it. His mother sent back a letter saying he could finish his study closer to home if he wanted. Josef’s master did not want to lose such a hard-working boy, he hired a girl to help around the farm and house. That was big relief for Josef; he could study more and work more on his apprenticeship.

Josef was a very strong young man; he would not let anyone put him down. Sometimes he beat up guys much bigger and stronger. If they tried to be pests, he taught them a lesson. Friends loved him because he always won the dispute. He protected his friends from evil guys.

At work he was exceptionally good, customers requested him for their jobs. Though he was an unpaid apprentice, customers tipped him. Sometimes they gave him as much as ten korunas (Czech currency) and that was something. With this money, Josef could buy himself a lamp for his room and read books in bed, which he loved to do.

When Josef’s three years of study were over, he got one of the best reports from his employer and the master asked him to stay with them. He offered good pay, but Josef wanted to go home. Unfortunately, when he got home, he could not find a blacksmith job, so he went to work for a man who was digging water wells. That was an extremely hard job; everything was done by hand with no machines to help. Josef worked hard. There was no time limit on days of work; he worked as required. The pay was good and that was all that mattered to him.

Josef soon became friends with son of his new employer. This boy knew where to go to have fun on Saturday and so, after a day of hard work, the boys would get dressed and go to a dance in the downtown village. Life was good until Josef’s employer become mentally sick. He started to see everything wrong, he stopped paying money, and he began accusing Josef of wrongdoing. I assume he had Alzheimer’s. Finally, Josef had enough; he said goodbye and left.

By now it was 1929 and Europe was in crisis. The Great Depression was just beginning, and during the ten years that it lasted, Hitler used it to his advantage. There was not enough work and not enough food, and he promised people work, food and good housing, and Czechoslovakia was hit hard.

Josef was not a boy anymore, but a young man. He wanted to work but had problems finding a job. He got some short employment, mostly with farmers, but that was not enough because Josef was of an age when he wanted to start his own family … and this was when he met my grandmother.

Josef was a very good-looking young man, funny and never cheap with girls. Josef’s only fun was spending Saturday evenings in a restaurant called Moravian where he could dance until early Sunday morning. One night Josef saw a very nice-looking, young girl with dark, wavy hair and gray—almost green—eyes. Her name was Marie Tulakova. Josef liked her very much.

Chapter 2: Meet My Grandmother

My grandmother Marie was born May 28, 1912, in the village of Bitouchov, Czechoslovakia, in a small cottage. Her mother’s name was Stephanie Tulakova. There was no father in picture, but his name was Josef Korinek.

Stephanie did not love her daughter. She’d become pregnant by mistake, by a lover she could not have, and she blamed Marie for it. Marie grew up with not much to eat, and with a mother who had no love for her.

Marie and Stephanie lived with Stephanie’s parents. Stephanie’s father’s name was Augustine Tulak. He was a quiet man He owned one cow, and one goat. He milked them every morning, which gave him money to buy other things the family needed. Augustine did not care about his granddaughter very much, but his wife, Marie’s grandmother, was very loving. She was the only one who loved this little girl.

Marie loved her grandma so very much, but in the winter of 1918 her grandma closed her eyes one last time and left this world. Then, in October 1918 Marie faced one more death. Her mother, who was pregnant again, did not want another baby and she tried to abort it. She died of blood poisoning at just 28 years old.

Now Marie had no one to love and protect her. What now? What to do next? What will happen to me? Marie wondered. She was just six-and-a-half years old when her mother died, and now she was left alone to be raised by her old grandpa, who did not love her. What happens to children when times are extremely hard for adults? They get neglected. That is what happened to Marie.

When my grandma Marie was 50 years old, she wrote a poem about that time, which was the hardest time of her life:

I grew up without father, without mother.

I did not have sister or brother.

Not even a friend.

Just loneliness was my mother.

My best friend was hunger.

It was with me all day long.

It even went with me to bed.

I did not know what a mother’s kiss was.

I did not know what love was from the time I was born.

Nobody read children’s stories to me when I was going to bed.

I was alone then; I am alone now.

As I write this, I am crying. I loved my grandma very much. Life is hard, and history is repeating itself with her granddaughter—me.

I love you, Babi.

Marie was skinny and hungry all the time. Crying did not help; not even hugging the skinny dog in the garden helped. Grandpa did not care for her or for the dog. He forgot that Marie needed to eat, and that she needed something to wear. She had to cover herself with clothing left behind after her mother and grandma passed. The clothing was big, but at least it helped her to not to be cold all the time. She was such a waif that people said there was a ghost in her Grandpa’s house. She went around town wearing a long skirt turned around her skinny body a couple times, and towels wrapped around her feet in the wintertime because she did not have shoes.

Every morning, Marie took milk from her Grandpa’s cow and goat and went to the village to sell it. After that, she went to school. At school, the kids often picked on her and called her ugly names or beat her up so that she went home crying. Marie was small for her age; she did not have enough food to grow up strong and she could not fight those kids. Grandpa was not sympathetic. He told her, If you are stupid and let them do it to you, then you deserve it. She would remember those words all her life.

There were also nice people in the village who sometimes gave her clothing or shoes that their own kids did not wear anymore. However, that did not help Marie; her grandpa took her stuff and sold it in the village to get things he wanted for himself.

In 1920, Marie turned eight years old. Life changed for her then, because her grandfather sold his house—including Marie and the dog— to an older couple called Mr. and Mrs. Janus. The Janus family had two older sons. One was already married, and the other was 24 years old and still lived at home. They were exceptionally good people. They never let Marie work around the house and instead they sent her to school, nicely dressed and wearing good shoes. As well, any time Mrs. Janus went to town, she got Marie something special just for her. Marie no longer had to worry about food; she had more to eat then she could handle.

Six months later, another turn in Marie’s life began. In those days, kids who did not have parents were ‘available’ to anyone without an adoption process. An older couple was interested in bringing Marie to their home. Marie left the Janus family home to move in with these people.

Little Marie called the new people she lived with ‘Uncle’ and ‘Aunt. Their last name was Novotny. Uncle was nice to Marie, but Aunt was a woman who loved her husband more than anyone else. She did not care too much about Marie, nor did she spend any time with her―however, Uncle loved that little girl.

Uncle used to spend a lot of time in the bar, and many times he came home a little drunk. Because he loved little Marie, she was the only one who could change his actions. She begged him nicely to stay home and not go drinking, and more and more he did that for this little girl. Uncle did that for her because Marie always did everything that he asked her to do and she never complained, she just got it done. He wanted her to be incredibly good in school and so she made his wish come true by becoming the best student.

At home, Marie also worked for a glass bead factory, making bracelets, necklaces, and tiny purses for ladies to wear when they went to theatre. Uncle was so happy with Marie that many times he sat down and helped her with work. She made good money, about 40 korunas per week, which was good pay then. She paid Uncle and Aunt for room and board, and then kept the rest of the money for buying clothing, things for school and some yummies.

Suddenly kids in school wanted to be her friend, but she