Rudolf Kolář

„When the United Agricultural Cooperative was established, they took his lands and he was assigned a substitution but those plots had been left barren. Because they had taken his tractor and his forage harvester, he had nothing to work the land with. He asked the tractor station, it had been already established [to plough the plots]. But the tractor station did not have the machinery needed. That’s why he was taken to the court, because he did not work on the assigned plots. When they came to take the forage harvester, they took it, or actually stole it and the chairman of the co-op, they were missing some pipes, so he came to pick the pipes. Dad was nervous so he told him to go away. And they… I to talk to him when we got back there [after the farm was restituted to us] and I asked: What did actually happen? He said, they forced me to give it to them. But there’s stated that he had a firearm [? - unclear]. That’s what they had told me, he could have me killed. So he told me, that’s how I had to say.” “The one who came to pick the pipes?” “Yes, to pick the pipes. You know, he did not have those [machines] to cultivate the land… and there were those interrogations of mz mom. I was four years old so I would be home alone until the morning. Nobody milked the cows. Grandpa and grandma couldn’t do it, grandma has had apoplexy, so you know, the cows mooed all the time. I had to stay at home alone until my grandma from the next village from where my mom was from got to know so they came there. Nowadays, if someone left a four-year-old on their own like this, they would be prosecuted. At that time, this just happened. Mom was crying so much that her eyes got sick and she needed to wear glasses.”

„When they jailed him, nobody cared about the livestock, nobody fed them nor milked them, mom couldn’t go there because there was the court verdict. They left them for three days, nobody fed them, nothing. Then they dragged them onto carts and took them to the abbatoir because they couldn’t even walk, because they got mastitis. That’s how they killed them, if you don’t milk the cows, they get mastitis. So they dragged them onto the carts, and they haven’t eaten, you know, their stomachs can’t stop working. They had nothing to drink, and then they dragged them onto the carts. That’s what I saw. They used horses to drag them, you know, Honza and Pepík, those were nice horses.“ “What did they do with the horses?” “Abbattoir, too. And some of them that were left behind, there was one which stayed in the co-op. They were older but really nice. Dad couldn’t forget them. He was good in handling animals, and they pay you back for that.”