Stanislav Groh

“I received an official draft invitation; we used to go get drafted one year before joining for the actual service. I was passing by the tables where officers and medical doctors were sitting. I was wearing just red boxer shorts; other than that, I was naked. There were no problems; I kept saying: ‘The athletic team officials told me they had arranged for me to join the Rudá hvězda [Red Star military sports team].’ Then I approached the political leader; he was one Major Haďáry, stationed here, and he spoke Czech-Slovak-Hungarian. He said: ‘Ah, Groh Stanislav, your credentials don’t look good. Your father owned twenty hectares.’ I said: ‘I have arrangements in place to join the military sports team; the sports team officials arranged it.’ – ‘This is out of the question politically. We have assigned you to a tank unit in Milovice, and the tank commander will keep an eye on you, politics-wise. Dismiss!’ Then he read me some credentials from the community of Štikov where I didn’t even live. It was written in ancient Czech; it must have been written by some old geezer farmer. It didn’t even mention hectares but ancient Czech land measures such as ‘korec’ and so on. That was the first time in my life when I heard how many cows, horses and everything else we used to have.”

“He came back home from a meeting crying. Actually, he succeeded to sell one horse before the collectivisation, and we kept Minda the brood mare. Then the first order arrived – surrender your cows to the cow house – but the communists hadn’t built the cow house. There was Mr Schnabel, a Jewish factory owner who had fled Hitler to England. When he came back, they didn’t allow him to manage anything. He also had a farm on the outskirts of Nová Paka with room for about 30 cattle. That’s where they took our cows. Dad was not allowed to keep Minda the horse at home, to make sure he did not conduct business with it. There is a famed brewery in Nová Paka, and its stables were in good condition. Breweries used to have their own horses to cart beer to pubs, but they replaced them with lorries in the 1950s. Our mare was in stable there; maybe there were also other horses they took from other farmers. My dad loved the horse, and so he made arrangements with the cooperative – which became a state farm operation later on – and was allowed to take care of his horse because he just loved it. He would go there twice a day and tended the horse.”