Bohumíra Školníková

Bohumíra Školníková

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Religious sister Bohumíra, named Rozália Školníková, was born on 23 September 1917 in the village of Kysucký Lieskovec as the oldest of five children. She attended the state school and later continued her studies at the church grammar school. In 1932, young Rozali matured a decision to become a religious. In August of the same year she started studying and preparing for the monastery in Stockerau, near Vienna, where she spent two and a half years. After returning to Slovakia, to the newly opened monastery in Spišský Štiavnik, followed by a period of formation, postulate and novitiate, after which in July 1938 began to compose the first promises. Rozália Školníková received the religious name of sister Bohumír. Later she decided to complete her education, so she started her pedagogical studies in Nitra, which she did not complete because of her religious duties. After a year she returned to school, but she changed her pedagogical focus to nursing she had been eager to devote herself to since her youth and joined a medical school in Bratislava. In 1943 she was employed in a hospital in Kežmarok, where she worked as an instrumentalist in the operating room and later as a head nurse. Here also survived the SNP period, the end of the war and the arrival of Russian troops. The actions of the communist regime directed against the Catholic Church were not touched by religious sisters working in the hospital in Kezmarok until 1959, when they were forcibly evicted and transferred to Slovenska Lupca. The nurses who were able to work were demanding jobs, and so Sister Bohumír managed to get a job in the Czech Charity, specifically in the retirement home in Horní Vidim. In 1961, a nursery home was conducted with Sister Bohumír, after which she was taken to interrogation and investigation in Košice, where a trial of several religious sisters and priests took place in August. Sister Bohumír was accused of assisting in anti-state activity and establishing a secret order. She was sentenced to seven years in prison. She was freed on the basis of amnesty on 9 May 1962. Subsequently, she returned to Bohemia, where she first worked in a children's home in the village of Brtníky in the Děčín district and later in a retirement home in Jindřichovice pod Smrkem in the Liberec district. In 1969 she became the regional superior.