Alena Šustková

* 1941

  • “They put Dad in the locker. They accused him of having liquid manure leaking out of his yard. He started his term on Monday, on Tuesday they brought us the eviction notice. Dad was locked up in Most, and the day we were leaving they released him to help move. He came on Wednesday morning, and there was a car already standing there, loading up the things that we were allowed to take with us. They moved us in one lorry. I think we each had one bed, and we could also take the chairs, a table, and one wardrobe. Grandma wasn’t included in the injunction, but because she didn’t have anyone else apart from us, she went with us to Vikantice.”

  • “We didn’t know where we were going. They got lost because they didn’t know the way. They took us to Vikantice somehow via Šumperk. We arrived there at midnight. No one had any information, so we slept on the floor in front of the offices. The administrator took Grandma in to his house.”

  • “In October or November they came to inspect the house. They locked Dad up and took him to a public hearing in Staré Město pod Sněžníkem, where everyone was obliged to go. They sentenced him to five and a half years based on the fact that they had put empty sacks into our cellar, and inside those sacks there was an envelope saying they belonged to the state farm. They sentenced him to five and a half years just like that for nothing, and he sat through the whole term.”

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    Lipová-lázně, 14.04.2015

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    duration: 01:30:34
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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We could only take as much as would fit into an Avia

Alena Šustková (Nimsová)
Alena Šustková (Nimsová)
photo: archiv pamětnice

Alena Šustková, née Nimsová, was born on 25 January 1941 in Radonice nad Ohří in Louny District. Her family owned a farm there with 24 hectares of farming land. During the rural collectivisation, on 4 May 1953, the people’s tribunal in Louny tried her father on fabricated charges of endangering the united economic plan and sentenced him to four months in prison and the loss of all his property. On 16 July 1953 the whole family was then expelled three hundred kilometres away to Vikantice in the foothills of the High Ash Mountains. All members of the family had to start working on the local state farm. But they were still not safe from persecution, and the local functionary supposedly tried to frame Alena’s father for some further crime. In the end her father was sent to four more months of prison in April 1954 for “stealing Socialist property”, and again in November 1955 for six weeks on the same charges. But this was still not enough, and so on further fabricated criminal charges during a public hearing on 18 February 1959, he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison and the loss of all of his property. The family lost everything again, including their savings. In 1970 Alena Šustková moved with her husband and children from Vikantice to the small spa town of Lipová-lázně, where she still lives today.