"In the 1948s, a few people who represented the national administration came, and my grandfather and grandmother, uncle Zdeněk, who also worked in the store, and my father had to leave the department store with only their coats. They weren't even allowed to take their personal belongings that they had stored there. Then my dad was told to stay there because no one knew anything about the operation. He worked there for another three years but was unable to support his family, so then he went to the rolling mills of the Poldi steelworks."
"In February 1958, the party carried out an inspection of 28 Kladno business families. Three gentlemen rang our doorbell at quarter to seven in the morning. Grandma Hoffmannová thought they were my dad's colleagues, who was on the morning shift in Poldovka, so she let them in. They went straight up to our place on the second floor and started listing all the property that was there. My mom went to work in Kralupy, so she didn't come back until after midnight. They didn't even let her get dressed, they listed everything and made her pay eight thousand for two valuable paintings so they wouldn't be confiscated. Grandpa Frank was led around the garden with a metal detector and forced to say where he buried the gold. Of course, they found nothing because he didn't bury anything. They took him to the police where they kept him for 48 hours and kept telling him that in the department store he certainly hid the fabrics he wanted to save from the national administration, which was completely nonsense. But it affected the grandfather in such a way that he basically died on New Year's Eve after three quarters of a year."
"I was not recommended again by the district party committee, and in the university, they said to me: 'You have such a bunch of positive recommendations, only one from the district party committee is negative. If you change that, the door is open here.' So, I arranged an interview at the district committee of the party in August 1961 through the mother of a classmate, a member of the party, and the secretary for agitation and promotion, who was responsible for education, the one who told me that my grandfather was the leader of Kladno merchants, so she told me at the end: 'You know, comrade, we have to reckon with you as a young capitalist generation. We can't shoot you.' So I understood that it was no longer worth staying in Kladno and I left Kladno to work in hop farming in Žatec, from where I applied to Pilsen for technology and I preferred to try it remotely and after half a year I asked to transfer to full-time studies, which was not possible. But they told me that I could start my first year again from September. So, I actually started studying normally three years late."
“The worst was in 1958, one day in February. I just got dressed for school, I attended the tenth grade in the secondary grammar school and I had some political training from seven in the morning. At a quarter past seven, three gentlemen rang to say they were going to the Franks' apartment. They marched straight to us on the second floor, they said to me: 'Go, go, go!' – when I said I was going to school. And all morning they were confiscating, i.e. they confiscated and wrote down one object after another, paintings... In 1958. It happened to 28 business families in Kladno at the same time. I went to school, and then my brother also went for the eighth lesson, but my uncle's children had gold chains around their necks so, they wrote them down too. They took my grandfather to the police and kept him there for 48 hours, and they kept saying to him: 'Where did you bury those fabrics when we nationalized you ten years ago?' So, they took him and the detector around the garden where he lived, looking for buried gold and in the department store as well. I don't understand how they could imagine that somewhere, at the moment when the National Administration came to nationalize, how he could bury materials or hide them somewhere. It damaged Grandpa's health so much that he hardly spoke since February, and then he died on New Year's Day.''
"When nationalization took place in 1948, a revolutionary group came and with immediate effect banned access to the entire family, we have documents for that. They only kept my dad there because he did the accounting and purchasing, so they needed someone to stay to keep the business going. So, my dad worked there for another three years as a buyer. My grandfather and grandmother, all family members were banned from entering the building. Commissions were set up to go after individual shop owners in this way, and in my grandfather's case it was because someone came up with the idea that all shops with over 50 employees had to be taken over by the National Administration. National administrators have been appointed. But grandpa never had more than 40 people in the shop, but ten here, ten there - it didn't matter at the time. And millionaire's property taxes were assessed for the period when the National Administration had already taken over, so no one from the family, father, grandfather, grandmother, uncle, no one was allowed to have any property income, because all the property was taken away. But one was not allowed to have any income in the following years either, because it would immediately go to the so-called debt in millionaire's taxes."
"From the other side of the family, from the Hoffmann family. After the First World War, Grandma Hoffmann and her husband took a mortgage and built a two-floor house in Kladno - the grandfather was a watchmaker and goldsmith - and two apartment units for their two daughters. The grandfather died in 1926, so the grandmother, as a widow with a five-year-old and one-and-a-half-year-old daughter, had to pay the mortgage. So, she lived all her life until the war in one room with her two daughters, who both successfully graduated from grammar school, but in cramped conditions - the toilet was in the basement, the sitz bath was brought up from the ground once a week for a bath, and the whole house was rented out to pay the mortgage. In 1960, there was a note that the main street must be socialist and that where there is more than 50 percent of commercial space - that shop had 8.4 percent, which my grandfather made as a goldsmith, now there was a barber shop - that it would be expropriated. So, in 1960, the house was expropriated from my grandmother. After a lifetime of repayments, she lost what she had been preparing for her girls. In 1968, it seemed that this would be corrected. Grandma died in 1965, so she didn't live to see it. Both my mom and my aunt asked for a return, but it didn't happen because it stuck in the District National Committee. There were people who expropriated it, so in 1968 the house was not returned, it was not returned until 1990."
"I went to the district committee of the party to talk with Mr. Bejček, the secretary for agitation and promotion, Mrs. Rohlová, and there was also the secretary for education, who came under her, Mrs. Kolmistrová. Very nice lady who said hello and didn't talk the whole time. Mr. secretary told me to sit and said: 'Well, comrade, what's your problem?' I said: 'I graduated with As and I wanted to continue studying to be something and you don't give me a certificate, so I ask why?' Mrs. Secretary Rohlová started talking: 'You know, comrade, your grandfather was the biggest businessman in Kladno, and he not only howled with the wolves, but stood in the lead.' I said: 'What do you mean? My grandfather was a businessman, he never interfered in politics, he wanted to sell and live.' 'No, no, your grandfather was against the communists!' I said: 'He wasn't. I know from my mother - and she never lies because she is a Catholic - that my grandfather gave 20,000 during the elections to every political party, from the Communists to the National Socialists, because he was a businessman.' So Mrs. Rohlová changed the subject and said: 'If you wanted to go to study, I could arrange an agricultural school for you in Bělč.' I said: 'But I have a high school diploma, the school is attended by boys who leave the eighth grade.' She explained to me that they simply cannot allow this capitalist generation to participate in the management or administration of the state, and at the end this Mrs. Rohlová told me: 'You know, comrade, we cannot shoot you as a capitalist young generation.' And that ended my interview at the District committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia and I left. That was in 1961, in August.'
Marie Bednářová, née Franková, was born on August 24, 1943 in Prague. Her grandfather owned the largest department store in Kladno and employed about 40 workers, including his own family. However, shortly after the communist regime came to power in February 1948, the Franks lost everything and faced persecution for several decades, including an ambush by State Security in 1958. Despite her alleged bourgeois origins, Marie Bednářová was finally allowed to enter the Kladno secondary grammar school, where she graduated in 1960, and then she tried twice unsuccessfully to be admitted to CTU. After the rejection, she got a job in the district metal plant, where she knitted wire. Later, she decided to leave Kladno for Žatec and worked as an office worker in a hop farm. She was actively involved in sports and became the first female ice hockey referee in Czechoslovakia. In 1962, she applied for distance learning at the mechanical engineering faculty of the University of Mechanical and Electrical Engineering in Pilsen and she graduated in 1968. In October of the same year, she married Zdeněk Bednář and started working as a researcher in research at Poldi Kladno. She and her husband secretly listened to foreign radio and in 1977 participated in copying the petition in support of Charter 77 human rights. In 1990, Marie Bednářová became the mayor of Kladno for one term. After it ended, she returned to Poldi Kladno, where she worked in the technical department. At the beginning of 1997, she was approached by the Union of Towns and Municipalities of the Czech Republic with an offer of the position of the director of the Fund for Local Administration Foundation. She retired in 2005, devoted herself to sports and her grandchildren. In 2022, she lived in Kladno.
With Jiří Dienstbier (the first one from the left) – Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czechoslovak Republic, discussion of the Civic Movement, after 1991
With Jiří Dienstbier (the first one from the left) – Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Czechoslovak Republic, discussion of the Civic Movement, after 1991
