Anděla Černá

“On Thursday the chairman of the district national committee came to say we were to move out the next morning. We moved out, and that put an end to it. Everything stayed there and we were gone. It all stayed there. We even had decorators around that day because we were to celebrate our church anniversary on Sunday. As we were decorating, scraping the walls down, we swept it all up into little heaps. We were provided with only two cars. When we found out about it, we were all afraid we were going to Siberia. We had no idea where we were going. Grandpa worked on the farm. I was attending grammar school, but I had to stop after a year because we got a new headmaster who was a Comrade. Before that we had Doctor Javůrek, who was excellent, and he stood up for me because I was a good student. And [the new headmaster] said: ‘Well, Nevoralová, I don’t know if you’ll be able to continue your studies.’ And Mum said: ‘They started deporting people throughout Moravia, we have to fulfil all our quotas so they don’t evict us. So you have to stay at home and work.’ So Grandpa and I kept the farm. I ploughed, I rode the horses, I did everything. At sixteen, because I stayed at home. Grandpa was about seventy-five years old, he was born in 1883. So we fulfilled everything and delivered goodness knows what. So we reckoned that we’d at least hold on to the farm. All Mum could think of was to hold on to the farm, except we didn’t. So he came on Thursday, there was to be the church anniversary on Sunday, so we were decorating. All the neighbours came over, and we had wood ready for a barn. Dad had wanted to build a barn. So we cut that building timber up and we took it with us into the mountains. A carful of wood and a small ‘Vincek’ stove - because Grandpa said that if we were heading to Siberia... They didn’t take Grandpa, because he wasn’t registered with us. So we left him sitting on a chair in our empty house. Mum sat on top of the car. We drove through Brno on 7 November, when there was a manifestation there. The weather was bad, it was snowing, raining. We came to Lanškroun. There was so much snow that the cars barely got through. There was one spook with us in the car. My brother and I could sit inside the cab, Mum sat on top, but under the tarp. Grandpa had given her a fur coat, so she wouldn’t freeze. They brought us to Hynčice at eleven o’clock because the heavy snowfall meant we had to be pulled along by horses. We had to report to the farm in Staré Město, and we were already assigned houses where we would all live.”

“I could swim since I was four, so could my brother. I was in the pond every day. Say, when we sweated away on the field, we’d go for a swim as late as ten o’clock. We still had to bring a jugful to water the cucumbers in the garden and all because our folks came back from the field, Mum had to go milk, Dad took care of the cattle and the horses. It was a busy from dawn till dusk.”