Zdeněk Krůpa

“Two cars drove in to the yard and ten cops got out. Two of them lined us up against the wall, me with Zdeněk in my arms. My wife held the younger one, he was eight months old. My parents stood next to us. Two gendarmes on either side, and the rest rushed into the stable. They led the cattle out and took them round through the back gate. There were people from the Zašová co-op waiting behind the barn to take the cattle from them. And they objected that... we didn’t take anything from you... But they wanted the property. And they kept saying they weren’t preparing anything, oh no, that they wouldn’t join the co-op, and in the end they had a place ready for the cattle in one of the neighbours’ barns for more than a month. It was us and one Trčka, who had a large farm, at the lower end of Opálky. There was a farm there too. They herded it all in to the barn. So they deceived us. And while this annihilation was underway, they made a big noise. You know, it was kind of a show, so everyone would see it. There were people right in our yard, at the neighbour’s house, and in the street. And Novák yelled: ‘Do you see? This is how you’ll all end up if you don’t join the cooperative!’ So the people reckoned, they’ll do this to us... They came to herd our cattle away, and the others had to hand theirs over themselves.”

“It absorbed him completely... He had to keep thinking about it. And so I told him: ‘Dad, we can’t keep doing this.’ That was in ’57, when they were openly talking of destroying us. When it was clear. But the Communists approach was like this: first, they set to undermining the village community. Put the small people against the farmers, and those against the larger ones. And they were successful with that. They’d just say: ‘The farmers have cattle, they have fields.’ But I told the chairman [ofthe local national committee - trans.]: ‘Those are operating materials. Can a co-op function without machines, cattle?’ But they misused it. I told the chairman: ‘Look, Mr Chairman, I attend funerals, and I’ve never seen them ever put a cow into someone’s grave, or a pig or a hen. So what’re you saying that farmers... Everyone was basically just a temporary administrator of their farm. And it mattered in what condition they passed it on to those who came next.’”