Vera Sestakova with nursery school children on a trip

Here I'm on a trip with children from the nursery school. My daughter Vera is walking in front, the first on the left. The photo was taken in Znojmo in the 1950s. I did a two-year nursery teachers' course in Boskovice. Back then, they let us study even without having finished high school, because they had a shortage of teachers. They formed two classes, because there was a lot of interest in that course. I did distance studies. Because in 1954, after I had children, I started work as a foster mother. And the course was from 1958 to 1960. I worked as a nursery school teacher until I retired, which was in 1978. But then I still worked a bit. They still needed me, so I still worked there. Not full time, but only part time. I could have retired at the age of 55, because I'd been in a concentration camp, but I worked longer. My husband and I had two children together: Ruzenka and Veruska. Our custom is to name people after the dead, not after the living. Ruzenka is named after my sister Rozika, and Vera after my niece, my sister Jolana's daughter. We used to call her Pötyi, in Hungarian small, petite. She was beautiful, this clever, smart little girl. She didn't survive either. When my daughters had their own daughters, my wish was that they name them Miriam, after my mother. Well, they didn't listen to me. Both of our daughters were born in Znojmo, Ruzenka in 1948 and Veruska in 1950. Vera graduated from high school, and then did a second high school degree, so that she could work as a nursery school teacher. That she studied for about four years, distance learning. She then worked in Znojmo as the principal of a nursery school.