Dáša Bičovská

“After Dad had been sentenced, we lived here in grandma’s little house. Mom, brother, and me in a flat which had a kitchen and one room. The farm was appropriated by the state, and they appointed one man, his name was Dalloš, he was half Hungarian, half Gipsy, to administer the farm. I walked by our farm on my way to school, and the horses recognized me, because before Dad got sentenced, we had been doing the harvest work just with my father and his friend, and I had been riding the horses and doing everything. I called the horses, and Dalloš took a whip and whipped them till they were bleeding. These are things I will never forget. When I walked by next time, I pretended not to see the horses. He has left the machines outside. They all got damaged and broken. I was going to the garden to study. He chased me out with a whip, too, accusing me of stealing his fruit. We accompanied father to Chornice. He went to prison. Since the place where we lived was administered by Brno, he had to go to the prison in Cejl in Brno. This region is called Little Haná. We speak the Haná dialect here. Three days later some man approached me, shouting: ´We are the working class, we we’ll show you!´ I was a girl of sixteen, and girls of this age usually have different things to worry about. I was nearly sixteen, and girls of my age usually have different things to worry about. I didn’t. I didn’t even take dance classes like young people do. Because I felt as if I was older than my age. I didn’t have interest in anything. I wasn’t interested in things that young people enjoy. I simply cannot forget it.”

“It was me who took care of everything then. And they made fun of us at the agricultural office, because they told us that we filed in the request, but that the cadastre office was not dealing with it. We did not have to pay the Land Certificate. But when I went there later, I realized that they had not filed it in at all. So I asked to speak to comrade Novák. He told me if I got back to Karviná, it would be settled in a week. He was telling my husband… I already walked out how angry I was. I thought I would go at them, I was so angry. Eventually, we managed to solve it. But they always emphasised that it was just a relief of property injustice. The house was completely destroyed, we didn’t know where to begin with repairs. They put fertilizers loosely in the barn, so there are still — I had it plastered twice, I had two loans — maps and it cannot be repaired. There are still communists living in that village and no one cares. Each of them takes care of himself. Communism and the devastation, it was really huge. Mainly it was the moral devastation. Houses and property are, after all, eventually abandoned, but the moral devastation sticks to people.”

“We got engaged that we walked with teachers and graduates of the Zlín school. We wrote ‘Direction Moscow’ and changed the traffic signs. We did what we could. We did what we could do within our limited possibilities. We were definitely against the occupation. And when I worked in Optimit, I worked as a forewoman, there was this evaluation of foremen and forewomen. They summoned me as well and they were telling me: ‘Comrade, what is your opinion on the entry of the allied forces.’ And I said: ‘I see it as occupation’. And they said: ‘If we put it into your assessment you will get nowhere as a technician.’ And I replied: ‘I am grateful to my husband. I am marrying a miner, I may not have to work at all, so put it whatever you like.’ I don’t know whether they wrote it there. I was trying to get hold of my personal filed but it got lost in Optimit in Odry. I wanted to know what they wrote in, what was there.”

“When we came there, our parents didn’t have any money. They didn’t have anything at all. Daddy was in prison and my Mom was here alone. Grandma was receiving a pension of 150 Crowns. I was going to school, and my brother was still little. They didn’t have any savings at all. This was going on since 1948. Dad had saved some money in a fixed deposit. But they have annulled it all, when president Zápotocký made that financial reform. All the money was gone. When we came there… I will never forget the first Christmas in 1957. Not only didn’t we have any presents. When I see today that people borrow money for vacations abroad, and for all kinds of things. We didn’t even have money to buy a box of Christmas chocolates. I will never forget my Mom crying. I can still see her tears. We didn’t even have chocolates to decorate the tree with. Not to speak about presents. Not even the small Christmas chocolates. We didn’t have money for that. We told her: ´Mom, it doesn’t matter at all.´ But she is a mother. And you will never forget something like this, that she had to suffer this pain.”

“In 1969 I came to work in black widow’s clothes. My boss was waiting for me and he said that he was waiting for Lánská; adding, that if I came in black clothes, he would sack me. But he didn’t. When evaluations of leaders and foremen were conducted, they asked me: ´Comrade Lánská! What do you think of the entry of the allied armies?´ I replied: ´I regard it as occupation!´ And my boss, a communist, who didn’t have problems with me being a kulak’s daughter, told me that I was making a political hero of myself. It’s not worth talking about it. I told him: ´Comrade, when you said that you wanted me to grow politically, you should have politically…´ I said to this communist chairman: ´Comrade, I was not running around with a pamphlet We won’t let you shoot our children, as you did.´ I simply wasn’t afraid of them at all, I was able to oppose them a bit.”

“I remember that in 1948 after the communists came to power, Dad was delivering a truckload of grain as part of his prescribed deliveries. When they later established the state agricultural cooperative, the entire cooperative’s output was a truckload of grain. And yet, the cooperative then comprised of several villages. I remember that when our sows were about to lie in, we fed them only lucerne and water. We weren’t feeding them anything else. There was nothing to give them, we had to deliver everything. I also remember that they ordered us to grow flax up there. Flax is not grown in these areas at all. You couldn’t even harvest it. They did nonsensical things like this. At first they went with my Daddy to see our cellar, and Daddy had potatoes and beet stored there. The first thing every good farmer does after harvest, and even I now it, and I don’t have much experience, is that he puts some of the produce aside to use for planting the next year. Daddy had set these aside and he had some stuff thrown over it. They turned him into an enemy for this. A barber, who has never seen anything in his life, and who joined the communists. He declared that Dad wanted to rob the working class and that he had hidden it there. Nonsense. It was terrible what they were doing. Daddy was working the field alone. When I see him, on that stretch of the field, and he standing there, his pants flapping in the wind. He was so thin that clothes were just off him. I could see where it was heading to. He was doing all the work alone and this couldn’t result anything else but his collapse. He contracted pneumonia and pleurisy. My brother has never forgotten how he saw our father on that field. He felt so sick that he leaned against a tree. My ten-year-old brother said that he saw him urinating blood, and that he led him home. They somewhat cured him here in the hospital in Třebová, but they put him to prison immediately after. These are things I would never want to happen again. I want people to know about it, to know that these things happened.”

“I remember that one day my mother, brother and I went to visit him in Brno. There was a table ten metres long. It just seemed very long to me at that time. Dad was sitting at the end of the table. There were two policemen with rifles sitting next to him. We were far from him. They didn’t let my brother in at all. He had to wait in the anteroom. He was crying there terribly. They didn’t care. It was just a short visit, anyway. They were standing there and listening to everything. Our parents weren’t allowed to talk bout anything. I couldn’t even caress him or take his hand. Nothing. Nothing at all.”