Jiří Fanta

"We were threshing crops. Dad was down by the sacks and the straw, mum fed the threshing machine and I was unloading the crops from the cart; we always brought in two carts of crop. Comrade secretary came and dad had to line the sacks along the gatehouse. When a hundred were ready, men came in from the Erhart plant with a Tatra 128 - four militiamen, the driver and the truck master. They loaded the truck and the master was guarding my father with a submachine gun, just in case he might want to harm them."

"There was a trial in Chotěboř on 30 April 1952 where my father was sentenced to asset confiscation and eviction from Zhoř. Dad's asseets were seized but mum's other half was officially not - yet they evicted them both. Then a secretary arrived and told dad: 'Better get a job in another district, or we will evict you from here to Siberia.' Dad got on a bike and rode to [Golčův] Jeníkov to the Kotěras; Mr Kotěra was a shoemaker. They had a little house in the yard with two rooms, one of them was a hide storage. They cleared out one room and we moved in there. Then in 1954, my mum... Dad went to jail, got nine months for non-delivery, and I was left alone with my mum. Mum got sick on 30 April 1954. They took her to the hospital and she died on 4 November 1954 - she had uterine cancer. She'd been healthy up to that point, but the stress and all that sent her to the grave."

"Dad had the photo [of members of the National Fascist Community]. When the glorious working class won in 1948, a meeting was held at the Brolíks' in the monastery. Daddy and Provazník were there. Jarda Kočů was speaking like a dyed-in-the-wool communist: 'Comrades, we have to be firm...' During the break, [dad] went to Jarda, took out the photo and told him, 'Jarda, don't forget what you once were.' That was the beginning of the end for us."

"My father's back gave out in 1952. He would lay crippled for two months or more. Mum had to turn him in the bed. Then she had to do everything - cows and whatnot. We had horses, and I tended to them. I did the spring work with them. I could carry the pad but not the collar. I put the pad on the mare and mum put the harness and collar on. I did field prep with the horses. What a time; nobody can picture that, and I was just eleven. The only thing that saved us was that we got evicted."

"They let us go 'victoriously' on 20 June 1952. The worst thing was, the comrades didn't even allow my father to borrow horses to move to [Golčův] Jeníkov. They didn't lend my dad horses saying he could harm them. Dad would never ever hurt horses in his life; they were his pets. Venda Vojtěch moved us from Jakubovice. He took a hay wagon and moved us to Jeníkov. It was another district, Čáslav. District secretary Matoušek arrived drunk; he would get up still drunk in the morning and was drunk again by afternoon. He said, 'Hey, you hillbilly, get out of here in 48 hours, or we'll take you to Siberia!'"