“StB was hardly able to watch the remote place where we lived. In a moment when they came to arrest dad, he ran away and he was then hiding for three and a half years. At first in the forests, for about three weeks. Then in a hiding place on our farm. The StB were looking for him every week, with dogs, too, but they have not found him. They were walking around him. Eventually they installed an eavesdropping device to our house. They brought in about half a kilometre of wire. My mom and my father’s sister discovered it, they tore the wires out and they found out that the wires ran immediately next to dad’s hiding place, and so they threw them away. There were house searches every week. When I was older, like four years old, I already remembered some of that. At first, I remember that two Tatraplan cars arrived to our house on the opposite bank of the river from where our house was, and since it was only rarely that a car arrived to our place, I – a little boy that I was – immediately rushed to open the door. Dad barely made it to hide himself. My mom then scolded me. When they later came for him and they took him away, we were then going to visit him to Rtyně v Podkrkonoší where he was imprisoned for two years and he was working in a coal mine there. I only remember that the journey there was horrible, back then in 1958. When skiers were going to the mountains, we were standing in the packed train on only one of our legs. The journey to the Krkonoše Mountains always took almost three days, there and back. When we arrived there, we walked all the way from the train stop, and we arrived there all out of breath, and then we talked with our father for ten minutes and …”
“Until 1960 our parents were refusing to join [the Unified Agricultural Cooperative]. When dad then returned [from prison], obviously they had to join, there was no other way around it anymore. My father worked on the fields at first, and then he was in a team of bricklayers. We were lucky, because the cooperative’s chairman was a decent man. In a way, it was thanks to him that electricity was brought to our house in 1963. They had to install lines two kilometres long. There were five remote settlements around, and thus it paid off. The pretext for installing electricity there was a sheep hut where my mom kept young cattle. She looked after them and grazed them. They brought in electricity there for her, into a kind of a box which was never opened. There was no electricity in the sheep hut. In the morning she would let the cattle go to the river to drink. We were helping mom a lot. We were helping with installing the barbwire and fences, and leading the cattle over the river, because the pastures were on both sides of the river. On top of that, she was looking after the mentally handicapped brother, and so she had lots of work to do. All the time. When dad was in prison, when he was hiding, and later as well. She was a holy woman.”
“Then it was all over. Nobody asked anyone too much. In 1977, the construction of the freshwater reservoir was being finished, and nothing could thus stay in the vicinity. They planted trees everywhere. I regret that even the valley is no longer there. The life there was harsh, especially in winter, when there were seventy-five centimetres of snow. On the leeward side of the riverbank, snow would remain until April. We walked to school and sometimes dad had to walk in front of us to make the path clear of snow. The river was frozen, which came in handy, because we could play sports there. Summer house owners were coming there in summer. I have only the best memories of that valley. But dad probably did not have many positive memories, because he has not experienced anything good there. He had to rebuild the whole farm there and eventually he had to surrender it. I think that he never went there with us afterward to see the place how it looked later. There is only water. Thirty metres of water. If they ever wanted to release the water from the reservoir… At that time, they allowed the buying out of construction material, truss pieces from the roof, Eternit fibre cement, good roof tiles, for about tenth of the price. We were transporting the material by trailers to the construction site for the new farm in Chodeč. A “Stalinec” caterpillar vehicle arrived there and leveled out the rest with the ground.”
František Ondrášek was born January 30, 1953 in České Budějovice. He lived with his parents Marie Ondrášková, née Bínová, and František Ondrášek at their family farm in a remote place called Benák, which was located in the hills above the river Malše near Sedlce (district České Budějovice). His father was a member of the Czechoslovak People’s Party and from 1954 onwards he was persecuted for his activities. He avoided the first arrest and then he was hiding on his farm, disguised in female clothing. He was captured in 1958 and imprisoned in Rtyně v Podkrkonoší, where he worked in a coal mine. In 1960 he was released in the amnesty declared by president Novotný. František began attending elementary school in Velešín in 1959 and as a son of a political prisoner, he faced persecution as well. During the political thaw during the Prague Spring he enrolled in the secondary school of agriculture, specializing in machinery, and he successfully completed his studies in 1972. While he was doing his compulsory military service, the farm in Benák was forcibly bought out due to the construction of the Římov water reservoir. The family was building a new farm in nearby Chodeč from 1973. František has worked in the Unified Agricultural Cooperative throughout his entire life. During the Velvet Revolution, he became a spokesman of the Civic Forum in the Unified Agricultural Cooperative in Velešín, but he left the position of his own will. He was subsequently active in municipal politics in the People’s Party. Since 1991 he runs his own business, a trade company with agricultural machinery.
