Marie Ambrůzová

"Great-great-grandfather Jan Valčík was not only a blacksmith, because that would not have supported them, so he helped out. He was a village servant, he was also a coachman, he kept watch at night - he was a night watchman, he worked wherever he could, and it is at this point that I always wonder how they managed to raise eight children. When I look at the pictures, how sturdy and round they all were... They weren't exactly poor. It was also because they were used to working. They barely got out of school, even as children, they worked, Dad recalled. Then great-great-grandmother had a small field, a small garden, and she also helped out with the work of various neighbours who were a bit more affluent and had more cows and horses. They all had to be handy. The girls, for instance. Because afterwards, from Terezín, they sent their children - it's now in the Terezín museum - various embroidered handkerchiefs, to Miládka. Or a textile sewn doll that had hair from her grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, and then they sent shoes made out of bread crusts. We also saw that when my parents gave it to Terezín."

"He then apprenticed in Klobouky with Mr Matyáš as a tanner, but I think he was there only five years. He worked there. They always had this principle of going to work right away. Schools were not on the agenda somehow. Some people from Smolina commuted to Zlín and to the Baťa works in Otrokovice, and he got there too. Jan Beňo, my grandfather, worked there too. That Valčík, he was also very active. Our daddy said that he always... There was a stream near us and he used to bathe there, even in winter, at Christmas he used to take a bath. He had the first motorbike in Smolina, and he used it to commute home from Zlín once a week. Then he joined the army, then he was sent back, and then there's a lot of things where he crossed - which states, how he got to England... It's all described here in the book, it's too much for me. Daddy remembers that he was eight years old and that he was friends with him. He used to play with him a lot when he came over. That's why Daddy remembered Josef, Jožka, so much."