Miloslav Havrlík

“The communists promised to support small businesses. Our mill was no factory. It was just to make living. Maximally middle-size, but rather a small private enterprise. The mill got closed, parents were jobless, my brother too. He was actually threatened to get punished for keeping a construction material secret. That was quite common. If anyone was interested in the mill back then, he would have gone to prison and we would have been chased out completely. That happened quite normally. We had neighbouring millers, who ended up that way. During that period it was also quite common to make flat checks, and the whole mill was check for keeping stuff that was forbidden. And imagine, I kept my gun there...”

“The mill, as I said, was operating for full and it had to be running, when the farmers brought the cereals, as the situation was the same everywhere, flour was high in demand. The village provided for the towns. There were only few food-stuff to get for ratio tickets and everyone wanted to be better off. (Did you actually get in real trouble?) As I mentioned before, there was an announced check and I do remember how we all fast cleaned the cereals, which was extra. So that you could not find it. But all through the war there were checks. I remember there were women, mothers from the neighbourhood, coming around the mills buying flour. Mostly my mum was handling the business. She could sell as much flour as we got left. Three or five kilos of flour to anyone, who came past. And when there was no flower, there was simply none to give.“