Dobromila Kvasničková roz. Kopečná

“Flunkies – we called them flunkies – were coming there from the district administration office: they were waiting in front of our house until we arrived from the field at around eight o’clock in the evening, tired after all-day’s work. They came to the cattle-shed and they enquired how much milk we got from the cows and whether we were not hiding some milk or butter. One day mom got so angry that she told them: ‘If you don’t leave, I will stab you with that pitchfork.’ She was holding the pitchfork in her hands. She was so enraged that she would probably do it. That would have gotten us into trouble...”

“After the summer holiday he began studying law at the faculty, but then there was the February 1948 and other political purges followed. Students who did not come from working class families or who did not hold the materialist worldview did not have any chance to complete their studies. Even the teachers who were inconvenient for the communist regime were being expelled. The examining professor thus advised them at the end of summer vacation in 1948: those of you who can should prepare for the state examinations – that would be your last opportunity for the exam. The teachers themselves already suspected that the students would not have a chance to complete their studies. My husband told me that he did not think that he was sufficiently prepared, but he took his chances nonetheless. His other schoolmates who were more hesitant and who thought that they would not pass the exam then never received their university degrees.”