Václav Přibek

* 1945

  • "The match was finished, we were in Strašnice, my brother and I went to the tram, the tram number 11 was going there, it was completely full at the end station, people couldn’t even fit there... And here [on Wenceslas Square], when Aeroflot was there, there was - I remember - a pile of paving stones and next to it were some Public Security helpers, or how to say it, who probably put it there on purpose... And some guys took the cobblestones and threw them and broke the shop window. But it was spontaneous... not that somebody took the cobblestones from the crowd, not at all, it was more like people who were just put there, who just shuffled around, who then did it... Whether they were agents or Czechs, I don't know. The crowd was surprised, they froze. Forget it... Everybody started to pull back and realised that this was something that was spoiling everything and that they wanted to provoke something. And everybody also realised that it was their life on the line. Because if the crowd had actually gotten angry, they would have been able to shoot the place up, I think..."

  • "In 1958, the police came to our house in the morning, it was again sometime in September, they did a search. We had geese, chickens, but we were paid in kind from the farm or it was deducted from their salary, I'm not sure what it was exactly... And they said we had a lot of poultry. But it was necessary, because when my parents were working, they couldn't go shopping, they would have to go to Trutnov or Žacléř, it was about the same distance. So, we had geese, chickens and a pig, but they allowed us to have those all, we were allowed to have them. But then they said that we had too much and that our parents were stealing from the farm and that we were fattening our geese. But they didn't consume too much, we had a lot of them, because there were Slovaks living above us, and they had geese too, and there was a stream behind the road in front of us, so they thought they were all our geese... They came in the morning, made a search, and took my father away and locked him up. My mother and I were wide-eyed... Then they came and started weighing the cups of grain with which we were feeding. Dad was driving the horses, but there was another pair of horses that this one German guy, Willy, drove. And mom, in the winter, to keep busy, she fed the calves in the house next to us, there was a modern barn that the Germans had. And they said my parents were robbing the farm of the fodder. So, it went to court and they wouldn't let dad go, and dad was remanded in custody and there was a trial and they sentenced him to three years... And my mom was originally supposed to get one year for stealing too. But because she stood up and said no, she didn't do anything wrong, they added another year."

  • "Sometime in September, the State Security came, searched our house, threw all the clothes out of my mother's closets... it was just a terrible mess... I watched it as a child thinking what we had done to whom. And they took my dad away and locked him up. He was never in court and he was locked up till Christmas. He was in the prison Bory, and we only got to visit him once. And it was so... it was bad for me because my dad was behind glass and still behind a net and we had to stand across from each other. I didn't understand what anybody did to anybody because I don't know that he's ever done anything to anyone. And then he came home for Christmas, that was in December 1952, and by that time we got the decision that we had to leave the Domažlice district and that we couldn't go back there nor visit anybody... We were evicted to Babí, that's the Trutnov district, a kind of mountain village. We could take some things, but we couldn't take anything from the farm, because a small moving truck arrived, only basic things could fit in it, and there were people waiting there who - I think - liked some things, so much that they took them. But I can't say it was like that... But I have this unpleasant... unpleasant memory when we had a cat and this one guy threw it in a sack and killed it..."

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    Praha, 15.05.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:46:53
    media recorded in project Stories of the 20th Century TV
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I have basically been punished since I was born, no one told me why

Václav Přibek in 1951
Václav Přibek in 1951
photo: Archiv pamětníka

Václav Přibek was born on 15 September 1945 on the farm U Blatských in Luženice, Domažlice region, as the last of three children of Jakub Přibek and Markéta Konopíková. His parents came from an old peasant family from Chod region and farmed their farm until 1953. The farm belonged to his grandfather Václav Konopík, who was the mayor of the village during the First Czechoslovak Republic and a member of the Agrarian Party. Václav Přibek experienced the gradual liquidation of private farmers in the Chodsko region, which ended for the family first with the imprisonment of his father Jakub (1952) and then with the confiscation of the farm and the forced eviction of the entire family to the village of Babí in the Trutnov district (1953) - the official reason was “failure to meet the state’s obligatory supplies”. In Babí he attended primary school, attended religious classes and was confirmed. In 1959 he left the village together with his mother. This was preceded by the arrest and imprisonment of both parents for allegedly “stealing fodder from the state farm Trutnov - Babí”. He attended elementary school in Prague, where he lived with his aunt Marie Konopíková during his parents’ imprisonment. After the return of his parents, the whole family moved to Strašnice, Prague, where his parents lived the rest of their lives. After finishing elementary school, he was not allowed to study further and began to learn to be a bricklayer, working on the construction of a number of Prague housing estates. While working, he finished his eleven-year evening school and successfully graduated in 1965. Later he graduated from an industrial school, completed his pedagogical education and from the 1980s taught future builders at a Prague apprentice school. He lived through the 1968 occupation in Prague - he witnessed the dramatic events on Vinohradská třída. In the 1990s he worked as a construction manager. The farm in Luženice was returned to the family in the 1990s in restitution, but none of the family returned. The part that he still owns is rented to the agrocompany in Luženice. At the time of recording (2021) he lived in Prague.