Here in Romania a farmer was worse off under the Communists than someone who didn’t farm
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Emil Bradáč was born on 24 June 1954 in the Czech village of Eibenthal, which is located in the Romanian Banat. His grandparents came to Eibenthal from Gerník. The witness’s father worked as a miner and married a woman from Eibenthal, who was from a Czech–German marriage herself. From his earliest childhood, he helped out on the family farm. After switching to learning carpentry in Orșova he also learned bee-keeping from his uncle, something he has now been doing for over fifty years. After his military service he married, set up his own farm and to make use of the higher income he began working in the local asbestos mines and later the coal mines. After completing his professional training he became a powderman and spent a total of twenty-six years working in the mines. During the controlled economy he was required to remit a quota of agricultural produce to the Romanian Socialist Republic, including spinned honey. In the past, after the fall of the Communist regime, he was a bee-keeping entrepreneur. Currently as a former miner he receives a pension and still lives with his wife in Eibenthal (September 2022), they look after their small farm and devote their time to natural medicine. Their son has lived in Germany for a long time.
