Josef Šmoldas

“The downhole drilling survey hit a deposit. A bit further on they found more of the same material, except the deposit just happened to head off in the direction of the first point, whereas they thought that was the size of the lode. So they went through the middle, but the edges were poorer because each lode has a different level of content. Some of them had lots of percent of copper, others only had zero point zero one four. That was at the very limits of possible extraction. But we didn’t have anywhere to import it from, and copper was a strategic resource. The industry needed it. So there was no other choice but to mine what we had.”

“I was entranced when I saw the old Greek women all in black, sitting on the doorsteps. Each held a spindle, and they kept spinning wool. I was fascinated by it. The men just sat there counting a thread of beads with their fingers. Everyone grew vegetables, and they were enclosed kind of community. It changed when their children came to Zlaté Hory. The young Greeks had been through the refugee camps, where they’d learnt good Czech. So they integrated immediately. I had ten Greek classmates at school, and they were nice boys and girls.”

“That was in 1959, when the sappers arrived with lots of machines. I’d never seen so many Tatra 111s [famous Czech lorries - trans.] and bulldozers in one place before. I wondered: What are they going to do here? What’s happening? Then Kvapil came up, he spoke with my father and said: ‘Jaroš, they’re going to knock down the houses marked with numbers. Come with me, take a bucket of water, we’ll wash some of the numbers off. Those are decent houses and I wouldn’t want Zlaté Hory to lose them.’ That man saved several houses that would otherwise have been demolished. They’d have gone down. That was when I realised that something big was happening in Zlaté Hory. Some ten buildings bit the dust on the square alone, and new ones were built instead.”