Brigitte Marksová

"The cooperative farm started in the autumn and ended in the spring because they didn't know how to manage it. All the [animals] they had taken from the farmers they gave back to us when they had nothing to feed. When they brought [the cows] to us at the end of February, it was not yet spring in our country, there was a lot of snow. We had a second house that they didn't take down, and my mother rented it. What didn't fit in our attic, we put next door. Usually it was straw and things that you don't need every day. But they didn't know that. When they took things to the cooperative farm, they cleared out our attic, leaving just a little bit of hay for the two goats we had. 'That must be enough for you, it will be spring soon,' they said. They didn't know we had something next door, so we fed [the cows] with straw."

"We were supposed to move out too, so my mum went to the mine to have my dad called from the mine, that we had to move out. They told her that all the families where someone works in the mine could stay. There were already lists and people gathered where they were all supposed to meet at the pub in Prkenný Důl with bundles, usually they put things in blankets. There wasn't much they could take with them. Aunt said, `Why do we have to go away and you stay here? You're lucky to be allowed to stay here in the family house!' Then we got contacts because we stayed in the house, we didn't change our address. There were a lot of them like my uncle. He had a mill, but they took it away. He stayed in Prkenný Důl, but at the very other end, all the way in Křenov, he got a little house. It wasn't until the fifties that he was allowed to rent something closer because it was impossible to live in that house. Then he had possibility to rent [his] mill. Not as a mill anymore, because it was all ruined, but he farmed."