Květoslav Mocek

"They confiscated everything and displayed it in the Breda department store shop windows. Buckets of lard and such. My father was about to start building stables for the cattle. He had already bought slivovitz; it was available. He had lard because people needed it... in short, things that people needed. They put it all on display at Breda and made him a kulak. We weren't kulaks, we only had eight hectares, but if you know what you're doing, you do well. This is still true today." - "So what else did they confiscate from you? You said lard..." - "Well, everything. Lard, clothes, old rags, liquor, it was all displayed at Breda and photographed. It's unfortunate that I wasn't interested. I should have photographed it and shown it to those lamers." - "How long was it on display there?" - "Quite long, for about three weeks or so. And lo and behold, they took my father in away from the machine. 'Stop it, you're coming with us to Janská.' My father came down, sent the farmhands home, turned off the engine, and as dirty as he was with dust, he went over to them. - 'No, no. Go wash and change.' - 'I'm not going anywhere, I'm going as I am.' He got in the car, they took him to Janská, and they locked him up there for twelve days or so."

"My father was threshing grain and they came to check what we had because they wanted to take him out, somewhere to Czechia, so they could start the coop. We left the coop the first time, and they wanted to set up a new one without him but didn't know how to do it. They took Fuchsig out and said, 'Let's also take a look at Mocek. Now, we can't do that. He's only got a lease on eight hectares. He's not a kulak, so we can't do it. But we can do a search.' That was in 1947 or 1948. It was 1948 because the barn was already standing, I think. My father was threshing and they started taking everything. I was a little boy at that time, and I used to go to the people who helped us and bring their grain to thresh or plough their fields with our horses. I was paying them back for their help. They put small change in my pockets now and then for extra money. And those communist bastards - they were fascists... they were even worse than fascists. They took my trousers, shook them and took every coin I had. They took everything."