Ludmila Holcová

"It was Karel who was to stay at home on the property, and when he left, Alois, the eldest, stayed there. He was killed on a tractor in '57, so there was no one to run the farm and they forced people to join the co-op. Well, my parents wouldn't participate, not even Lojza, but my sister-in-law... What was she supposed to do? She had four children and now what. Finally she joined the cooperative. My father built everything there when he came home from the war as a deserter. He was no ordinary deserter, but there was a time when soldiers left the First World War and were wanted as deserters. And then we had a game as kids - the deserter game. But that was a game, not a life. My daddy didn't want it to end up in the coop because he would lose everything. He got about 200 crowns of pension and Mommy got nothing. Mommy livedc with him. Then he did various jobs. Although he was skilled at everything on the farm, he also helped out in Vsetín with various street jobs to earn extra money. When we had the horses and my sister-in-law gave them to the cooperative, my father wanted them to let him have one of the horses so that he could earn extra money with it. But no, they wouldn't allow it. He always remembered that when they rode by our house, the horse would always neigh at home. Daddy was a prisoner of war in Russia. Then he escaped from captivity and he and his friend walked home from Halych. He didn't join the legionaries, he was drawn to the farm. He didn't tell us much. I'm very proud of him, what he did in his life. And now he saw that everything he had built was gone and he had to cope with it somehow."