Olga Fečová was born during World War II in Slovakia. After the war, her family moved to Prague, where she then spent most of her life. She worked on the railway, at OPBH (District Housing Management Company), and in a theatre as a cleaner and laundress. After the Velvet Revolution, she worked for many years as a teaching assistant at a primary school in Prague's Nusle district. At the age of 65, she completed her secondary education at the Evangelical Academy of Law and Social Work in Prague. She organized concert tours for the family women's band Romane romňija / Romani Women and took care of the production side of things for many other musicians from the extended Fečo family. Together with her husband, the famous musician Jozef Fečo, she founded and organized the activities of the children's song and dance group Čhavorikaňi Luma / The Children's World. She and her daughters were involved in temporary foster care. She led the women's group Jileha / With Love, which operates under the umbrella of the organization Slovo 21, and was also one of the leading figures of the Romani women's group Manushe in Krupka, where she lived until her death.
Her short story “Nevo Kher” / “New House” was published in the anthology of Romani ghost stories O mulo! Povídky o duchách zemřelých (Look, A Ghost! Stories about the Ghosts of the Dead, Kher, 2019), and the short story “Bejvák pod širým nebem” / “Open-Sky Flat” was published in the prose collection Všude samá krása (Nothing But Beauty Everywhere, Kher, 2021). In 2022, Kher and Paseka co-published her memoir Den byl pro mě krátkej - Paměti hrdé Romky (Not Enough Hours in the Day: Memories of a Proud Romani Woman), which was nominated for the Documentary Book of the Year award at the Jihlava Documentary Film Festival. In 2016, Fečová was awarded the Roma Spirit Award for her lifelong work for the benefit of the Romani community. In 2020, she was nominated by the Senate for the Order of Merit.
Photo: Dan Materna, MAFRA
