"At Tesla, they called me in and said, 'Do you write to your friends in the Netherlands?!' I said yes. And they said, 'But you write to them.' I replied that I did, and that I mainly wrote to them on birthdays, Christmas, and Easter. And they said, 'Then you'll always bring it to us to read.' I told them, 'You know what? You'll read it at the border anyway if you want to. I'm not bringing you anything. I'm not going to take this on myself." It turned out that my son, who was in military service at the time, was summoned to the political officer, who told him, "Hey, your dad was talking rubbish at Tesla, so he'd better watch out." And you know what? The next time they gave out bonuses, they gave me zero."
"We had greet Heil Hitler and one day we agreed that the whole class would raise our left hand when the principal came in. So we did. And even though I was ten years old in primary school at the time, everybody was on formal terms with us. It was unusual. The headmaster was on formal terms with us, but when we did that, he said, 'Boys, what are you doing? If anyone said that, the Gestapo would come here. You might get in trouble, your parents will be investigated. We don't need it. Don't do it, boys. I'll forget about it.' We've given up. The director was German, but he was sensible, otherwise it would have been a big trouble."
Vladimír Kotland was born on 3 May 1934 in Plačice near Hradec Králové. His parents, Marie and František Kotland, owned a farm on which they farmed. His dad took part in the World War I and served as mayor of Sokol in Plačice. Vladimír Kotland also joined the ranks of Sokol and as a teenager took part in the XIth All-Sokol Meeting in 1948. In 1953, the family joined a cooperative farm (JZD). František Kotland, who was a member of the Agrarian Party (after its ban he became a National Socialist), was threatened with four and a half years in prison because somebody reported his anti-regime views to police. Under pressure, he subsequently signed an application to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). In 1952 he graduated from the Tyl Grammar School in Hradec Králové. He continued his studies at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering of the Czech Technical University in Prague, where he graduated in 1957. During his rich professional career, he worked for example at the research institute in Opočínek or participated in the development of computers, which were at the beginning of their existence at that time. Thanks to his profession, he travelled extensively abroad. During the turbulent period of the Velvet Revolution, he was the only one to bring a letter written by members of the Civic Forum (OF) of Tesla Pardubice to a demonstration on Letná Plain. At the time of recording for Memory of Nations in 2025, he lived in Přelouč.
First from the left: aunt Božena Dašková, mother Marie Dašková, grandmother Anna Zyklová (unmarried), grandfather Florián Dašek, Plačice family farm No. 54, 1920
First from the left: aunt Božena Dašková, mother Marie Dašková, grandmother Anna Zyklová (unmarried), grandfather Florián Dašek, Plačice family farm No. 54, 1920
