Dad suddenly became a class enemy, a exploiter because he was feeding his entire family with his own hands
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Václav Schreiber was born on 22nd September 1940 in Vranová Lhota as the youngest of five children to his parents Josef and Anna. The day before the end of the war, the Germans nearly shot her father and two brothers together with all the men in her native village. They survived, but three innocent men paid their lives for the death of a German soldier, among them the cousin of witness Jan Jirauch. After 1948 his father nationalized the blacksmith’s workshop and all the machines. Václav Schreiber also witnessed the establishment of a local united agricultural cooperative (JZD) and the systematic oppression of local farmers. All family members had problems with the communist regime. The eldest brother Josef got married to a large farm in the village Bezděčí and under enormous pressure had to join the local agricultural farm and lost his farm. Sister Marie and brother Zdeněk had difficulties in their work due to their class origin. In 1949, another sister, Anna, joined the religious order of the Congregation of Merciful Sisters of St. Karel Boromejský. In 1952 she and her other sisters were deported her to the Trutnov region, where she had to work for several years as a worker in Texlen Trutnov. Václav, too, had trouble getting admitted to studies. Eventually he trained as a blacksmith. He then worked as a blacksmith and subsequently at the ČSAD. Václav Schreiber was aware of the totalitarian character of the communist regime all his life. Shortly after November 17, 1989 he founded the Civic Forum in ČSAD Mohelnice and also in Vranová Lhota, where he was elected a mayor in 1990. In 2019 he still lived in Vranová Lhota.
