Antonín Lamplot

* 1935

  • "It started with the cooperative farm: who joined the farm and had been a poor farmer, it in fact helped him. Some people managed to get employment for their son or for their daughter, or even the farmer, for example, went to Bořiny and only his wife stayed at home. Because as there were about forty members, half of the members were women and half were landless people and the rest were real farmers. Not everybody succeeded, some were forced to come back, this disrupted the relations. And it was hard for people to bear when so many people had been arrested in the area. It wasn't like..., I remember, for example, once there was a mare to be looked after because she was going to breed, so the neighbours got together. They played cards, they drank neat brandy, the mare bred on her own anyway, but it was a get-together and the solidarity was kept. That existed in the war and shortly after the war, then it stopped. Especially when there was the cooperative farm, it stopped almost completely, the get-togethers."

  • "The police arrived, two cars of uniformed and secret policemen arrived, and we were standing in the kitchen, all against the wall, one of them was guarding us. And they spent the whole afternoon going around the house, and every compartment or little drawer in the cupboard, those were thrown out, they even messed up the beds. And at that time, it was well known that they would always put something somewhere, like a gun, and that became a pretext for arrest and eviction. That was in August, in 1951. That was the first time they came to us. And then it happened again when they evicted the Zrůst family in the spring of '52. We had a visit like that, too. That just... that was fear."

  • "In the evening, it was about seven o'clock, a truck arrived. They were given about two hours to move out. They had time to load their things, and they were forced to leave. We were neighbours, the Trnka's were neighbours, so we ran over there and we were helping them. Some furniture, some small pieces, whatever we were able to pack [onto the truck]. I think it was Paclík´s car transport from Polička. At that time it had already been nationalized. And I remember vividly that Mrs. Zrůstová wanted to catch a goose, and the two men stopped her, saying that it had to stay there. And then they took each some geese and ate them, like [they took] everything else. Those were very sad moments."

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    Polička, 28.09.2020

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The communists stuck at nothing during the collectivization of agriculture in Telecí

Wedding photo, Antonín Lamplot and Libuše Kubíková, April 21, 1964
Wedding photo, Antonín Lamplot and Libuše Kubíková, April 21, 1964
photo: Witness´s archive

Antonín Lamplot was born on 25 August, 1935 in the village of Telecí in the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands. The family successfully farmed on a large private farm. When a cooperative farm was set up in Telecí, the Lamplots became members of the cooperative, but about a year later they left and farmed privately again. After that, they became the target of pressure and persecution by the local communists, who were not successful at cooperative farming in Telecí. Antonín Lamplot witnessed arrests and expulsions of the biggest local farmers. The Lamplots rejoined the cooperative farm in 1959, after the management of the cooperative had changed. After returning from the military service, the witness did various jobs at the farm until his retirement. In 2020 he was living with his wife at his family farm.