Václav Dašek

* 1949

  • “But she (mother) was also one of the few women in court proceedings. There was Mrs Rampas and our mom. She got eight months for outrage. That was the lowest punishment. At the trial, the judge asked her what she meant by 'rascals' when she said, 'We are working hard here in favour of a few rascals,' and she meant the local officials and the government. And she was a simple woman. She was stressed out of the local communists. So, she was afraid to say she meant the local officials. She said, 'the government.' And she got eight months! And her father said to her, 'If you said Mrs. Citová or someone like that, you would be fined fifty crowns.'”

  • “My dad was in Jáchymov. Those camps, Vojna, Bytíz, Rovnost, I know them from the story-telling. We used to go, we said to Příbram, but basically, we used to go to Milín. We always went to Prague to our uncle, we slept there and the next day our uncle drove us by car. There we were always waiting. Then they came marching. People looked curiously, the windows were painted so that no one could look out with just the free stripe above, and the taller ones could stretch out. Sometimes we saw him. They wore working jackets. There were queues waiting there, and then they came, and, as I remember, there was a long table with five of them sitting there and always the guard. And now, differently, when we began to speak out loud, we were shouted at, or I remember that some allowed, some did not. And once my father started putting it in his shoe, he took it and said, 'One more time, and we'll end the visit.'”

  • “As a result, eighteen people were arrested, each from a different village. Maybe there were two from the Mountain Range where the disputes began. And it was intentional. People were chosen to influence other, good landlords. All farmers. And all the larger landlords: Rampas had 44 hectares, Tomek 37. They were in custody in Dobruška and were generally thought they would have been freed. That it was an offense, they get a fine or a condition. There was to be a public trial in Dobruška, everything was already sent. But it was cancelled the day in advance and nothing happened. And a new monstrous process took place in the Sokol hall in Hradec Králové. There the workers came and it was already set to a completely different level. It was then the court in August 1950 and suddenly all the landlords there got big sentences. Tomek got a lifetime, Rampas 25 years, Hopper 22 years, my father 20 years, Basek 18. The minimum sentence was four years. And suddenly it was a treason. Father got high treason, no failure to deliver, no armament, no one could prove that. In the sentence it said, and my father had always made fun of it: 'The court has been convinced that I have committed treason.'”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Praha, 05.03.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:57:42
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
  • 2

    Praha, 14.03.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:31:50
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Rooted in the soil despite everything

Václav Dašek in 1955-1956
Václav Dašek in 1955-1956
photo: archiv pamětníka

Václav Dašek was born on 29 September 1949 in Opočno into a farmer’s family from Slavětín nad Metují. His family had been farming in the village since 1858. His father Ladislav Dašek took part in a demonstration of farmers in Dobruška in December against increasing supplies of the state. As one of eighteen protesters, he was arrested and sentenced to 20 years for high treason. The same court sent Wenceslas’ mother, Marie Dašková, to prison for 8 months for outrage. Václav grew up on his native farm, which became a part of the local collective cooperative. He graduated from an agricultural college and then attended an agricultural college. A two-month farm stay in Denmark in 1968 inspired him to wish to be privately managed. After graduation he worked as an agronomist in JZD Velká Jesenice and later in Agrochemický podnik. At the same time, since the late 1970s, he and his wife have grown mushrooms in the former barns and sold them on the markets. They invested the money mostly into the reconstruction of their native farm. After November 1989 he started fully own private business. Under the Land Act, he regained his native land and bought more. Nowadays Dašek’s farm is one of the largest in the region with 300 hectares of land. In 2009 he won the Farm of the Year award.