Václav Dašek

“My dad was in Jáchymov. Those camps, Vojna, Bytíz, Rovnost, I know them from the story-telling. We used to go, we said to Příbram, but basically, we used to go to Milín. We always went to Prague to our uncle, we slept there and the next day our uncle drove us by car. There we were always waiting. Then they came marching. People looked curiously, the windows were painted so that no one could look out with just the free stripe above, and the taller ones could stretch out. Sometimes we saw him. They wore working jackets. There were queues waiting there, and then they came, and, as I remember, there was a long table with five of them sitting there and always the guard. And now, differently, when we began to speak out loud, we were shouted at, or I remember that some allowed, some did not. And once my father started putting it in his shoe, he took it and said, 'One more time, and we'll end the visit.'”

“As a result, eighteen people were arrested, each from a different village. Maybe there were two from the Mountain Range where the disputes began. And it was intentional. People were chosen to influence other, good landlords. All farmers. And all the larger landlords: Rampas had 44 hectares, Tomek 37. They were in custody in Dobruška and were generally thought they would have been freed. That it was an offense, they get a fine or a condition. There was to be a public trial in Dobruška, everything was already sent. But it was cancelled the day in advance and nothing happened. And a new monstrous process took place in the Sokol hall in Hradec Králové. There the workers came and it was already set to a completely different level. It was then the court in August 1950 and suddenly all the landlords there got big sentences. Tomek got a lifetime, Rampas 25 years, Hopper 22 years, my father 20 years, Basek 18. The minimum sentence was four years. And suddenly it was a treason. Father got high treason, no failure to deliver, no armament, no one could prove that. In the sentence it said, and my father had always made fun of it: 'The court has been convinced that I have committed treason.'”