He experienced first-hand the effects of collectivisation
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Josef Hons was born on 27 August 1923 in Ondřejovec near Zvěstov in Central Bohemia into a numerous peasant with six siblings. His parents farmed seven hectares and all his siblings helped on the farm from childhood. The family survived the war unscathed. Following primary and high school, Josef Hons wanted to study agriculture, but began apprenticing as a retailer in Vlašim due to a lack of finances. After three years of apprenticeship, he was working at a branch of the Zvěstov Wholesale Company from 1941. He enlisted in Písek in October 1945, and after two years of military service took up an accountant job in a cloth shop in Mšeno. The Rudé právo newspaper accused him and his colleagues of profiteering in 1947. In the end, he was only labelled a witness and escaped punishment. Following February 1948, Hons joined the Communist Party and went on to become an administrative worker in the crop production section of the economic cooperatives. In this position, he witnessed the impact of collectivisation on the Czech countryside, the partial relaxation of the regime after President Zápotocký’s speech in the autumn of 1953, the currency reform in June 1953, the complete socialisation of the countryside in the latter 1950s and the merger of the coops after 1960. In 1963, he became the main organiser of the construction of a large-scale grain and fodder silo in Mělník. He was tasked with building a new metal silo there in the 1970s. He retired in 1983.
