When we fulfilled the shipment quotas one year, they increased them so we couldn’t fulfil them next time, so they’d have grounds for locking us up
Download image
František Holub was born on 19 June 1933 in the family farm in Vitice, in what was then Český Brod District. His parents owned one of the largest farms in the village, with more than 20 hectares of farmland. During the rural collectivisation, on 31 March 1953 a people’s tribunal in Český Brod convicted his father of sabotage in a show trial and sentenced him to four years of prison and the loss of all his property. In July 1953 they evicted the whole family two hundred kilometres away to the village of Hynčice pod Sušinou, on the eastern foothills of Králický Sněžník. A month later the witness’s brother Václav was drafted into the army, and his family background caused him to be assigned to the Auxiliary Engineering Corps (AEC; de facto forced labour), where he was kept for an illegal period of 30 months. In October 1953 František also received summons to military service. The same scenario repeated itself, he was also assigned to the AEC. He spent 27 months in the black-coal May Day Mine in Karviné. All the family members were then forced to take employment at the state farm in Hynčice pod Sušinou. František Holub never moved back to Vitice, and he now lives in Staré Město with his wife Marie.
