"I had a hard time. I wasn't talking and my parents were worried I might break down. The state farm manager came to greet us, he was quite a nice man. He told us to get settled in and get to work in three days. My father asked him if he could give me a job right away. You know, to take my mind off the hardships; I needed something to do. The manager told me: 'Come in tomorrow, on Monday. You'll man the harvester.' My father said, 'Boy, take it as it comes. Don't be so bothered about it.' He encouraged me. I started working on the harvester the very next day. We used to have one at home, and the tractor driver boy had never seen it before and was glad I was workign with him. I did the hard, tough, hired hand work such as loading manure and feeding cattle. I was always wrecked in the evening."
"The secretary came suddenly on Friday and said we were moving. He brought us a letter banning us from the Pardubice Region and said that cars would come the next morning to move us and tell us where were going. A small car arrived on Saturday and we couldn't fit our things in. Peope used to bring milk for a truck to collect it every morning, and so our neighbour [at the time] recruited the women who were there to come with him and talk to the district official. He said it was not fair, they were moving us like gypsies and we couldn't even take what they had allowed us to. The women went to our place and started at the man. They started cursing him. He was so scared he ran to the phone and called the office saying there was a revolt and that they should send us one more car."
"After the 1948 elections, when the Communists won, things went bad and I was already observing things changing just by seeing my parents. The first sign that gave me a bad feeling was when my mother cried at the news of Jan Masaryk's death. There were rumors he had been thrown out of the window. Mummy cried. I had never seen her cry."
"I worked at ČSAD as a bus driver. They made me feel that my cadre profile was not good. Even though my route was the busiest, I was the last one to get a new bus. That's what I'll tell you. So when it was happening in Prague, I was very well informed. My kids had friends there, my daughter lived there. Suddenly she calls: 'Dad, come here, there's a demonstration in Letná!' We came there, my son was still single. I saw the multitudes of people at the protest. Then I saw an policeman there. He was wearing a tricolour on his belt, directing people I thought, 'It's finished.' ČSAD was still very much a communist company. I saw students come in and the guard wouldn't let them see the director. Then they had a meeting. I was so in the moment; I lost four kilos; I couldn't even sleep. I would listen to the radio until eleven o'clock. I got up at three-thirty in the morning and I couldn't fall sleep by three. Then this happened: there was a passenger transport division meeting. The comrades who were sent abroad and the militia henchmen took the floor: we built so many flats and this was done and that, and yet the students... I couldn't stand it. I got up and told him to stop talking. What he was saying had been in the newspapers long ago. Now there was a new situation here and I wanted to ask the driector how he was going to handle it. The leading role of the party was abolished. In front of all the people! It was like throwing a grenade. He said, 'Where did that come from? Where did that come from?'"
"When I came on holiday from training in 1953, it was just about the time they came to move us. I mean, they came to tell us. In the meantime, my parents had been convicted of failure to deliver. They got a decree saying we were banned from staying in the village of Lozice and the Pardubice region with immediate effect. 'The place of your next stay will be announced when the cars arrive.' The cars arrived, they loaded them up, and we had all our property confiscated. The people who did this wre old fiscal officials who wrote it down by hand in these ledgers and left us copies. Certain things were exempt from confiscation, namely the living room, that is to say the bedroom. I don't know who advised my parents, I think it was the tax officers, to prove that the bedroom was her sister's dowry. She said she had it made for her daughter. They wanted two affidavits from my mom to the effect that they had it made for the daughter. My mom supplied the two affidavits, so they exempted the bedroom from the confiscation."
"Then I enrolled in school, agricultural school. I was accepted, because a district official was present during the final exams and praised me, and even when my father came to the interview, they said: 'Mr. Netolický, we learned that you said your son could not get into school. Now, why couldn't your son chair the Lozice cooperative one day?' Then in the middle of the holidays a friend came to see me. We were going to go to school and got two vouchers. He said he was invited to a part-time job at the school. I said, 'I was not.' I could see something was wrong. I didn't get anything. Two weeks before the start of the school year, I got a letter from the county board saying I wasn't accepted and no reason given. They sent back my report card and application form. That came in an envelope. When we were leaving school, we had to choose another vocational field in addition to the school. I didn't have much to choose from at that time. I could choose training for a metallurgist, a miner, and a bricklayer, and there was a brickyard next door. That was the closest, so I went to get a brickmaker training. Later on, I realised that I could as well have trained for a bricklayer - I would need it later on in life."
Břetislav Netolický was born in Lozice near Vysoké Mýto on 17 January 1937 into a farmer family. His parents owned a prosperous farm of 22 hectares. Following the communist coup, the family faced persecution and severe mandatory delivery requests. The witness was not allowed to study at a secondary agricultural school, nor could he apprentice as a brickmaker. In 1953, his parents were sentenced to imprisonment, a penalty and confiscation of property due to a failure to deliver. Fortunately, their prison sentence was lifted thanks to an amnesty. Eventually the family was forcibly evicted to Čejetice in southern Bohemia. They lived under the surveillance of local SNB (police) officers. Followign his military service, the witness worked as a driver most of his life. He achieved the return of the family property in the restitution procedure, but the farm was in poor condition and he was forced to sell it later on. He served one term as deputy mayor of Heřmanův Městec after the Velvet Revolution and then worked as a dispatcher until his retirement. He lived in Heřmanův Městec in 2024.
