Adolf Vondrášek

“I remember that the Communists used a kind of, what we’d now call a trick, which they thought would let them show everything in a different light. At the time, in ’49, suddenly in the summer or the autumn they suddenly started sending office people here on work trips. People who volunteered to help, that they’d help in the field, they’d help collect potatoes, and everything. I mean, no one invited them, but Dad and the other farmers thought perhaps it was some good intention of the government or to help those people, so we didn’t resist it. They helped us, Mum cooked for everyone, then they left again in one of those lorries – because buses weren’t very popular yet in those days, so they just left. And some time later, when needed, they came again. Another thing that was strange was that suddenly a tractor depot came up, brought a new Škoda tractor, said they’d help Dad with the harvest. There again, no one saw any harm in that, Dad didn’t mind either, we children certainly didn’t, we could hitch a ride on the tractor, the driver even let us drive for a bit. Everything was so natural, unforced. None of us realised what they were aiming at. We didn’t understand that until much later, when these farmers were pushed to death, devastated, deported, so then they sent the bill. The bill, I don’t know about the others, but I know our bill – 70,000. For the services they provided.”

“I must say that until the last moment, until this happened, he more or less kind of revived, so he behaved quite normally. Until the moment when they came a fourth time, until this happened, like how I describe it in the book, until he saw what was going on in the yard, the screams and crying of his wife. Then finally he broke, he knew it was the end of everything. That there was no way onwards from here, that they would take him away again without a doubt, that it was the end of the farm, eviction, the destruction of his family. And that Tesařík would really take it to the very end. He knew him very well. I knew him as a boy, right. But he knew him very well, all his quirks. Say, one time, he came to us, that was in ’51, he came during the parish festival, the Chraštice festival. That’s on the feast day of the Assumption of Our Lady, always on the Sunday after 15 August, when the family was gathered round the table. There were guests there, relatives, and he came in with his one lackey, that Tesařík, and said: ‘So, Comrade Vondrášek, won’t you be threshing?’ And he froze, turned all red, Mum said. And Mum saved the situation back then by taking a plate and offering them: ‘Have a kolach and come sit down.’ They waved their hands and left without a single word. In this way they cracked him, they broke him mentally, I don’t know how any of us would manage to react to such things, when you saw what those people were doing.”