Zdeněk Brožek

* 1957

  • "I got in, and I have to thank my former supervisor for that, because he was able to get me applied for such an intensive English course, which lasted two years, four semesters, and took place in Senohraby near Prague, where there was a special training center, at that time for the Ministry of Heavy Industry. And we always went there, the whole week we were there from morning to evening, from Monday to Friday, it was really intense. And imagine if it was November 17th, that was the week when I was coming back from those Senohraby. I remember it as i fit was today, when I took that bus from Prague, from Florence, to Jarov, if you know where Jarov is, I just saw a motorcade, it was on November 17, sometime around four o'clock in the afternoon, so I saw a huge column of police cars. Those were military... Those were police cars that were full of policemen going to a demonstration at the time. Because the demonstration was reported, it was known, that November 17 was such a symbol of student resistance. And I came home, I listened to Free Europe, of course, on Friday night. In the evening, sometimes around nine o'clock, they already reported what happened on Národní třída."

  • "What was the condition of the farm? Well, our farm, I can't say that it was somehow devastated. We used the barn, there was just one cow, they left it to us, or to our parents. So actually we had that one cow all the time , the milk and the cottage cheese. Apart from the fact that we had nothing, the machines that grandfather gave to the cooperative were not there, the fields were in a poor condition. Grandfather had a beautiful avenue of plums and so on, all that was pulled out. The field was one big area plowed down the hill, so there was a huge erosion of the soil below. The first thing I did was take... Because right after the revolution, it was crazy to take everything and work the nine with your bare hands hectares, that was not possible. And at that time the restitutions were such that the comrades did everything possible so that they did not have to give us anything. It was terribly time-consuming. At that time, they took it from my grandfather in one day, I have proof of it here, and it took me four years before they gave me anything back. But the first thing I did was taking that field down there where the erosion was the greatest, there really, it was taking the bank there, the soil was literally draining away there. So we took it there, we grassed it there, we strengthened it there. Well, we gradually acquired mechanization, so I bought the plots and we gradually started farming like that."

  • "I wasn't a Scout, unfortunately I was a Pioneer. At that time, it was the 60s, it was still a rigid communist regime, and our teacher was from a family where it was done that way. That's how it was back then. So we were, how it was called Sparkles, we wore some kind of badge. Then we were promoted to pioneers, we wore pioneer scarves. It was such a split because they told me something at school, then I came home and dad, not that he laughed at me at all, but he kind of hinted to me that he didn't like wearing scarves and stuff like that. It's just that we were six or seven years old at the time, so we were a little confused about it, we didn't know what was going on."

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    Lestkov, 05.04.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 48:21
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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I restored my grandfather’s farm, I had a sense of moral responsibility towards my ancestors

Zdeněk Brožek at military service (1983)
Zdeněk Brožek at military service (1983)
photo: archiv pamětníka

Zdeněk Brožek was born on March 18, 1957 in Radostná pod Kozákov. Both of his parents came from farming families, so they were greatly affected by collectivization. His grandfather was forced to join the agricultural cooperative and hand over all his property. Zdeněk graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and worked as a computer network administrator in the 1980s. He was in Prague in November 1989 and took part in a demonstration on Wenceslas Square on December 4. After the revolution, the family land was returned to him, where he started farming again.