“Obviously I know that all kinds of monstrosities took place during that time… but I think that the fate of this region is among the worst of what they caused… because, it wasn't just about demolishing villages and towns, about turning hundreds of square kilometres of that gorgeous… so gorgeous land upside down, but they also hit tens of thousands of people right in the heart. Because they divided what had been growing since the war…”
“At the end of communism… I was mowing the lawn around the church, and he says: “Why are you mowing that, just don't bother. We're going to take the church down anyway. We want to create more plots in here.” And that was at a point where sixty people were coming to the church regularly. And I said: “What are you talking about? Why would the church be taken down?” And he says: “Do you see a better plot here in Jiřetín? This one is the best. I want to have a house here!” He was saying that with a straight face. Contempt and ridicule, those were very common.”
“They moved my grandmother's sister to Chomutov and a year later, when demolishing came to the place where my grandmother lived – and where we had lived as children, where we grew up, the place we loved the most – they moved them to Most. Not only was the landscape and this beautiful village – beautiful in every sense of the word – destroyed, communities and family relationships were also divided.”
I think that the fate of the Most area can be rightfully considered as the worst of what communists caused. It is an apocalyptic scene for anyone who has love for anything
Vladimír Buřt was born on the 16th of March 1964. He grew up in Albrechtice, in the Most area. From childhood he was witnessing the devastation of the landscape under the Krušné mountains and the surrounding villages due to coal mining. He saw the disappearance of not only houses and entire villages but also of the human relationships and the solidarity that had been growing since the war ended. In 1983 his home village of Albrechtice was also destroyed. Despite coming from an atheist family, he found faith in God at the age of twenty-two and got baptised. He was involved in the underground Christian community. After the revolution he started participating in the fight for maintaining limits for mining. He has been the mayor of Horní Jiřetín since 2014.
