Berta Fišarová

"Because the situation with joining the cooperative was already so aggravated that our entry into the cooperative had already been signed by all the big farmers in the village. They took the cows from us to a common stable and brought pigs to our empty barns and our mother had to feed them. The fact that she had a two-month-old baby at home was not taken into account. So I looked after my little sister at the age of fifteen. The next year, the collective started to leave slowly and I took care of a group of women and we worked in the field. There was one unit in eight hours and ten crowns per unit that year. We worked as needed. We earned one and a quarter units that day. When I was eighteen, the agitators came from Nové Veselí, where a machine tractor station was established, and they needed women tractor drivers. It was a regulation, because in the Soviet Union, women tractor drivers proved their worth, and that is why they would be trained in our country as well. I was excited to be a tractor driver and to sign up. But our dad ruined it for me: 'You won't be a tractor driver, I won't let a girl into such a business!', and that was it."

"But I didn't want to be at home, I wanted to be a teacher. I urged my parents to find me a school, to enroll me in it. I wanted to learn and to teach children as well. However, this required permission from the municipality national committee. But I didn't get it because I was the daughter of a 'kulak'. I cried and begged to go to an agricultural high school, for example. I had a grandmother who came here to Vysočina from Čáslav, and because she knew that there was an agricultural high school in Čáslav, she went there to take care of it for me. She went to the director and took my eight-year school certificate. I had honors, so he accepted me and I could start in September. However, there had to be approval from the national committee, and it was negative. The director then apologized that he could not take me without a recommendation, because it would cost him immediate expulsion. He was strictly forbidden to take village children of 'kulaks' to the school."