Jaroslav Mazura

„Otec byl tak velkorysý, že si ani nestěžoval, nikomu si nepostěžoval. Úplně to chápal, že to dělají lidi, protože mnoho lidí takových, kteří sami hospodařit neuměli, tak ale když nám to brali, tak klidně si to rozdělili, jako kdyby to bylo jejich. Takže naše louky obhospodařovali sousedi a pro nás, co nám místo toho nabídli, tak to bylo na takových - jednak vzdálených nebo u lesa. Prostě když to zrovna někdo nechtěl, tak nám to dali jako záhumenku.“

“One day they even chased me, because I just happened to have the following sign, a rhyme, on the canvas of my truck: ‘It is beyond belief what a beast Brezhnev is.’ An they followed me. I watched them in the rear mirror and I thought: ‘What don’t they overtake me?’ They overtook me when we arrived to that place where there is the cross in the field above Helvíkovice. I think that they dared to chase me because the army was nearby. They did not see what I carried inside the truck, they only saw the sign on the outside. They overtook me, they jumped out of their car and one of them with a gun dived into a ditch. They made me stop. The commander, he was Polish and he probably understood what was written there, because he walked around the truck and he was looking at it. Then he came to me and he asked: ‘What does this mean?’ I replied: ‘What it means? None of us has invited any help here.’”

“When the comrades were establishing the Unified Agricultural Cooperative, there was great excitement about it. They tried to make people join (the cooperative - ed.‘s note) even by force. They were thus sitting in our house until midnight most of the time and they kept trying to persuade father to join the Cooperative. Because they thought that if he joined, then the others would sign it as well. He was a chairman of the National Unity and people therefore respected him. And so they kept explaining to us constantly what kinds of crops would grow on those field bulks.”

“I have been working with dad in the field or my entire life. And when they chased me away from the field, they thought that if I would not be helping him, he would then have no other option than to join the cooperative. And Mr. Trejtnar then probably got quite a scolding from them afterwards, because he kept going there all the time and asking: ‘Comrades, what would you like?’”