"In the 1950s, the owners of the [Dlask] farm were accused of failing to meet government deliveries. Two women remained to farm there - Mrs. Brožová and her daughter, later married name Melicharová. They were helped by Mr. Fridrich, a distant relative from Dolánky. It was no longer owned by the Dlasks. The last of the Dlasks ran the estate “into bankruptcy,” as they used to say, and to avoid disgrace, they handed it over to the Brož family through a deed of transfer. The local secretary, who dictated their agricultural quotas, essentially forced them to grow crops that could never ripen in Dolánky’s conditions. As a result, they failed to meet the required quotas. Both were indicted, both arrested, and Mr. Fridrich was also arrested. Later on, Mr. Melichar, the husband of Mrs. Brožová the younger, told me that on the very day they were expelled from the Dlask farm, the district secretary slept in their blankets."
"I'm terribly sorry that [my grandfather] didn't live to see the 90´s, because he was extremely entrepreneurial. During the war, for example, with an engineer from Prague, he set up iron ore mines in Vrát so that local people would not have to be totally deployed, so that they could be employed where they lived. The miner lived in our house and we have a whole archive, which I have therefore already donated to the district archive in Semily, which documents this period, how it worked. The remains of these mines are still there today. After the war, of course, it was closed down because it was a purposeful affair."
"My grandfather was born into this family, but he didn't want to farm. And my great-grandfather didn't disinherit him, but he said he wouldn't support him in his work. My grandfather apprenticed himself as a shop foreman in Železný Brod, and in the process he went to glass school and started a glass company in 1931. Although it was a small village, there were three glass companies in Vrát and they prospered quite well. They worked on a kind of factor way of working, that is, grandmother, grandfather and one accountant worked in the company. But he provided work for a number of domestic workers in the village and exported goods through export houses in Jablonec to practically six countries in Europe. In 1931 he built the house that we still live in, and I think our family will continue to live there because we are very much connected to the house. The moment he paid off the mortgages and the company started to prosper in some way, the comrades came and took the whole company away from him. And they took away his goods. And the goods that he had stored at somebody´s place usually never got to it again, and he and my grandmother practically never had any choice but to work from home."
Vladimíra Jakouběová, née Berglová, was born on 16 May in Turnov. She had a sister Zlata, three years older. Her mother, Zlatuše Berglová, and father, Vladimír Berglová, were educated in economics. The family was strongly connected with the village of Vrát. Their roots go back to the 17th century. In her childhood, she was strongly influenced by her maternal grandfather, who was a glassmaker and musician. He discovered the world of art and music for her. He introduced her to Vladimír Komárek, to whom she took drawing lessons. In 1956, the Communists confiscated her grandfather’s business and he continued to work as a labourer. Due to the family’s poor cadre profile, she had to study far from where she lived - at the Secondary Industrial Ceramic School in Bechyně. Here she spent her most beautiful student years, in close association with the teachers, many of whom were deposed by the political regime from the universities in Prague. After high school, she continued her studies at Masaryk University in Brno, majoring in art history and ethnography, and completed her studies with a doctorate in world art history. Her life has been shaped by field trips not only to the folklore-rich Moravian-Silesian regions, but also abroad (Poland, Armenia, Georgia). During her studies, she took up a position as a methodologist for the chronicler at the Turnov Museum. After a year in this position she took over the ethnographic and arts and crafts collection. Until 1986, she and her colleagues had to endure incompetent museum management. In 1988, she and her husband had a son David. Between 1990 and 2023, she was director of the museum. She was responsible for major renovations of all the museum buildings. Successful achievements during her directorship include, among other things, the revitalisation of the Dlask farm in Dolánky, the relocation of the historic timbered building of the Stone Cutters’ House from Havlíčkův Square in Turnov to the museum premises and the realisation of the Climbing Exhibition. Throughout her professional life she successfully promoted the revival of folk traditions of the Pojizeří and Podkrkonoší regions. During her years at the museum, she published a number of thematic publications. She also taught at the Technical University in Liberec. In 2024, at the time of filming for Memory of Nations, she lived in the village of Vrát.
