Veronika Veselská

* 1932  †︎ 2022

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She grew up in a farmer‘s family, and her husband later became the chairman of the JZD

Veronika Veselská, born Sýkorová
Veronika Veselská, born Sýkorová
photo: witness‘s archive

Veronika Veselská, born Sýkorová, was born on April 21, 1932, in hamlet Křemen, near Lipnice nad Sázavou in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands. Her father František and his brother farmed around 10 hectares of land here, and the witness helped out on the farm from an early age. She attended primary and secondary school in Lipnice nad Sázavou, where at that time P. Jan Havelka, who was later martyred by the Nazis, worked and taught. After the war, she attended a housemaker’s school in Havlíčkův Brod for a year, and in the 1950s she got married in nearby Dolní Město. Her husband M. Veselský, like the witness, came from a farming family of similar circumstances, and both families faced hardships after 1948, which led to their joining the unified agricultural cooperative (JZD). Due to the lack of manpower in the JZD, the witness was reportedly ordered to work in a cooperative, and her husband became the chairman of the JZD in 1957. Both continued to work in agriculture until the 1990s, when they both retired. The witness lived in Dolní Město at the time of filming and died in March 2022.