František Lesák

“I couldn’t understand one thing. That Czechoslovak citizens, though of German nationality... the Beneš Decrees were not published in any newspapers, I don’t know the details either, but I reckon the anti-Fascists should have probably stayed here. Except instead of letting them stay here, they simply stuck them into pig wagons and... And I was looking after – I have documentation to prove it – I was looking after one family, and things got so bad that when they put them in the camp there, there happened to be this small concentration camp there, where they collected them. And because he had three children, I would bring him lunch and dinner because they were rationed just 100 grams of bread a day, it was just dreadful. And I said: ‘Who gave you this?’ when I was at the district national committee. ‘Who gave you this, that they’re supposed to have this much, as if they were in a concentration camp, because they’re not, they’re citizens of our republic. This won’t do.’ So I got into a twist with them... but you can’t reason with the Communists for the life of you – they have their truth and that’s the end to any discussion. So I looked after them there. He searched for me too, some years later, he found me here in Dolánky, I’d built myself a nice house there, so he found me there.”

“I’ll mention Masaryk, one specific event. We were, it was warm, sometime in June, and now suddenly we were playing there, and there were seagulls in the Šárecký Stream. In short, we were catching them – catching, you can imagine, if they pecked you, that’d go right through. So while we were looking, we suddenly heard a voice, we heard a horse, that it’d stopped. And we heard: ‘Well, children, how are you, what are you doing?’ – ‘Well, sir, if you want, we can give you a lobster that we caught.’ And he said: ‘And what of your dad and mum? Do they have work?’ And we said: ‘Well, they’re employed, both of them.’ And he said: ‘That’s good.’ I remember that like it was today. ‘It’s good that they have work. Be good and listen to your parents.’ And off he went. Why did he ride through there? He found us there another two times or so. Because there was the manor house in Veleslavín, and his wife was being treated there.”