Vladimír Fassmann

“When I was born, there were no water closets yet. We used outhouses. You had to go down from the first floor and out into the yard. It wasn’t until around twenty-eight that they installed water pipes in Rožnov. I remember the maidservant trundling along with the wheelbarrow, the so-called sack barrow. You loaded that up with containers, buckets, and took it to the public pump near to where the assembly house is today. You pumped the water into the buckets, took it home, and then had to carry it up to the first floor. It was hard work.”

“So I went home. The business was already closed. Because when I had been on holiday - back then I was allowed to go on holiday for ten days excepting New Year’s Ever... in other words, I witnessed just what Mum must have experienced here. They came from Přerov, the chairman of RUM [Revolutionary Union Movement - trans.], the Party leader, and finally the brewer, and: ‘Look, the way it is, you’re a small brewery, and we have the option, seeing that supplies are rationed and we can ensure that you don’t get them. So, if you’d like, we’d be willing to take you over. We’re not pushing you, woman, but think about it. We’ll come, we’ll give you notice.’ Well, and they really did come. On December the twenty-third. A day before Christmas Eve. They said: ‘So here we are, here’s the agreement, if you’re willing to sign it.’ They only wanted the warehouse, to employ Mum as warehouse manager, the brewer as administration, and possibly the driver and some co-driver. I insisted there’d be a bottling line here, production, a bottling plant. They put that into a note. Well, and it was yes or no. Mum, what could she do... The Party had the upper hand. So she signed it. And so the brewery closed down come 1 January 1949.”