Jaroslava Picková

“They had us seated up at the balcony. Suddenly, the door burst open and two armed wardens entered with our dad in between them. He was a skinny, pale man wearing prison clothes. For me, that was a horrible shock. There were sixteen of them convicts including two women. It must have been the worst for the women since both they and their husbands were imprisoned, and as we found later, their children were taken from them. Next to the women were two female guards. Mrs. Hoštová was fifth or sixth in the line. As soon as she and her guards entered, the one to the left scanned the balcony with her stare. As they were walking towards the benches her stare remained targeted at me. I stiffened, not knowing what was happening to me, having goosebumps. Then the chief justice stood up, commenced the trial and asked whether there was any unauthorized person in the room. She jumped up, saying: ‘She’s sitting right there!’ And I got simply expelled. But I did see my dad, even though it was a horrible sight. I don’t know whether he saw me, probably not. But I saw him.”

“By coincidence, our neighbor was head of the machinery station. I used to visit him there because I needed to sort all those things out. I told him: ‘Please, Mr. Halbych, we need to harvest the rye!’ He responded: ‘Well, yeah, but I can’t… You know what? There will be two boys working on the collective field next to yours. If you arrange with them to harvest your field when they are done with that one, it’s fine by me.’ So I went to them and this future husband of mine stopped the machine. He asked the other guy: ‘So what do you say, will we do it?’ He replied that he had already promised this to someone else. In the end, he said: ‘Okay, when we’re done here, I will just move over to the next field. But who will sit in the binder?’ I replied: ‘Well, I suppose me.’ – ‘Okay, then.’ So he moved over and my poor mum then came on her bike and asked: ‘Oh my god, how will you put all of this together?’ She meant the binding machine. And this future husband of mine told her: ‘We will put it together with your daughter.’”