Jaroslav Křížek

"I ended up in Prague, I said I wouldn't join the party anyway. I went to a state farm, and worked on heavy machinery for about a year. And they also wanted me to go to the party. Whoever persuaded you got some money for a candidate. I had an application for an apartment because I lived in the playground in the caretaker's apartment. So they wrote to me to come to the Communist Party committee with a completed application form. I said I wasn't going to join the party because I wasn't convinced I could do it. And nothing happened. And once again, in about '85, when I was a heavy mechanisation worker, the head of the supply centre died. I was capable, so they gave me that position on a temporary basis. The head of the All-Union Committee of the Communist Party and the director went to me: 'Come in, we need you while you're a worker. When you're a technical worker, we don't need you.' I said, 'If you want me to do it, give it to me. If you don't want it, you don't want it. I'm not joining the party.' And they let me do it anyway."

"My father had about four or five hectares, and when they confiscated the yard and the fields, there were about 20 hectares that he also cultivated. The original owner was confiscated. My father worked there for about six years. Then came the merger, the establishment of the JZD, here a state farm. They forced him to leave. He had just planted, and left his cattle and machinery. I only know it from stories. The older generation didn't discuss it so much with their children, they kept it to themselves. I just know my mother cried when they took it. But my father didn't get upset, he enjoyed farming. Then, when they evicted all the farmers in the next village, there were 300 hectares to cultivate, they saw that he was capable, that he could manage, so they made him head of the centre, where he stayed until he retired."