"Comrades began to dismantle me. When I joined, I was given the task of reconstructing the electroplating plant. That is to say, to build a new one, basically. Make renovations in the paint shop. Arrange for replacement production in Jinonice and bring our people there. And so on. So I was under a lot of pressure for two years. I had to devote most of my energy to the factory. But they said, 'We're positive about all this. It's just that the central committee came to the conclusion that people who had exposed themselves in the year sixty-eight could not remain in management positions.' So the result of the screening committee was that they issued a new work decree, that I was removed from my position. And that my future fate would be decided by agreement." - "What did they mean that you were engaged?" - "I was a National Socialist and a comrade said, 'We know what National Socialists are. They would hang us!'"
"Remind us, please, how many hectares did your grandpa have?" - "Grandfather had thirty hectares." - "And he didn't want to join the cooperative?" - "He would go to the cooperative because he was in a hopeless situation. The cows got lameness and grandpa had to put them in forced cutting. So he couldn't meet the milk and meat limit. He was obliged to give twenty thousand eggs as a replacement contingent. This was just after the currency reform in 1953. "It was shortly after the currency reform in 1953. The whole extended family pitched in, and my father went around the nearby villages buying eggs so they could collect twenty thousand eggs and hand them over. Otherwise, he was facing prison."
"I know that when February 25 broke out and the government fell, they let us out of school. And when I came home, there was a machine gun in the factory between the gates, militia in new overalls, with LM tape, guns. And they said, 'Come on, young man, we're going to hang your father in a minute!' They were laughing and made fun out of it.
Miroslav Váša was born on May 10, 1938 in Libeň, Prague. He spent his first seven years in Čakovice, where his grandfather had a good position in the sugar factory. His father, Stanislav Váša, was an expert in aircraft production and servicing at the ČKD company at Kbely Airport. From 1943 he led a team of people who repaired German army planes there. After the air raids on Prague in early 1945, the family moved to the Kokořín region, where the witness’s other grandfather farmed. After the war, his father became the national administrator of the engineering company in Šluknov. There, he experienced the 1948 communist coup and nationalization. In 1951, his father was imprisoned for several months in Pankrác in Prague, lost his position as a technician in the ZPA company and worked only as a worker. During the purges in the early 1970s, Miroslav Váša was fired from his job. He worked as a temporary worker in a sugar factory, where he worked his way up to the position of deputy. Later, in the 1990s, he started a private business. During the filming in 2025 he lived in Újezd nad Lesy.
