Miloslav Beneš

* 1935

  • The collectivization was very hard for my parents, they took it to their graves, as they said. They suffered from neural diseases. As a boy, I survived socialism, I cannot complain. Even though they fired me from school, it was rather good. I didn’t even hurt anybody after 1968. Could you recall how did the eviction of your parents go? It was me and my brother who had to pack and bring all the things with us. The director of the state farms needed our place so we had to move out. But fortunately, councilor Sokol gave us an apartment in Počernice so we didn’t have to move to Sudetenland as many others. Some ended up really very badly. So do you take it rather positively in retrospective? It was like it was. One couldn’t do anything about it. Some person who knew the farm came to us and brought a machine gunner along – and now, do something! He looked into it all, gave us a paper to sign and that was it. You know cases of how those who revolted were sent to labour camps in Jáchymov for 10 years. It wasn’t worth it, we were weak in the February days. But it isn’t a problem for us. What happened, happened. The others should beware so that they don’t end up as we did.

  • When I left the school in the 1950s, I went to the Tolc farm for traineeship. I was there from June to September or October until my grandfather was evicted and had to move out of the farm. My grandpa had two other children and they got an apartment in Strašnice while he moved to our place. Later on, we placed him in the elderly home where he stayed until his death. Back in those days, he had to leave his place because he was a kulak. We were evicted in 1952. He could stay there but we had to leave the upper floor. So we started living with Mr. Herián, in his house by the graveyard. It is a gaming club now. Would you remember how your family reacted to your gandpa being evicted? When he was evicted, it was not anymore so… Other people went already through that in the 50s, so we knew what it was about. I remember as a boy that when they were taking our house, we had a cook. When she saw the lady from the National Committee with the policeman counting our property, she got so upset that she had a stroke. These were her last moments – looking at how they walked around and noted down all the items of our property.

  • In 1950, they took the Toulc farm from my grandpa and in 1952, they evicted us. Already before that, they took us everything but let us live there until then. Mrs. Vacková from the National Committee was walking over the yard and writing all our property down. Once, she met my dad and told him: “Mr. Beneš, join the party.” He replied: “Madam, that will never happen.” And she sued him for calling her “lady” and not “comrade”. But otherwise we were working on a state farm with my dad, preparing the feeding for the collective farm of Stáras. When they fired us, my dad went to Fruta and I went to Arborka.

  • After the revolution (in 1945), a fully armed German unit arrived in Počernice. And we didn’t know what was going to happen. In the meantime, they camped at the Nolč wall by the Nolč park. Finally, it ended up all right because they made a deal with the command of Horní Počernice, represented by lieutenant-colonel Ruml. They had to give their arms to somebody with a higher rank. So he accepted their weapons and then the Germans took some bicycles and took off. Shortly after that, the Russian troops came in and stayed by the forest.

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    Horní Počernice, 21.02.2013

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What happened, happened.

Youth
Youth
photo: Rodinné album

Miloslav Beneš was born in Horní Počernice in 1935. He remembers well the very end of the Second World War when German troops were fleeing through the village. They settled by the Nolč park and after negotiation, they handed their arms over to lieutenant colonel Ruml, before running further West. Still as a boy, he witnessed how his family was gradually losing all their property. The father of his mother was the owner of the Toulc court, one of the biggest farms in the area at the time. First, they had to reduce the number of farm workers and eventually, they had to release them all. In 1950, the Communists nationalized the Toulc court and Miloslav Beneš, along with his father, had to start working on a state farm at Stáras. Two years later, they were definitively moved out of the object as the director of the state farms wanted the place for himself.An interesting feature of Mr. Beneš’s evaluation of his own past is the fact that he doesn’t think about the persecution times in negative terms. On the contrary, he emphasizes that the local national council was kind enough to them as they didn’t have to leave to Sudetenland as other people had to. He just notes that “it was as it was. There was nothing to do about it. What happened, happened.” In a sharp contrast, other members of the household were deeply touched by the events. A servant got a heart attack and Mr. Beneš´s parents suffered from nervous troubles until the end of their lives.After serving with the combat troops in the mines in Karviná, he became a long-distance drive for Fruta. He stayed in this job until his retirement in 1995. In the same year, his family received the confiscated property through restitution. The buildings were, however, totally desolated.