Bohumil Loucký

* 1962

  • „Disastrous hygiene, they bathed down in the shaft when they were shorn, in that radioactive water. No protective gear, gloves, nothing. They were picking up pitch, that uranium ore, with their bare hands, and absolutely nobody cared. And he also had an accident there, he explained that a stone fell on his head. They had helmets, yes, so it pierced his helmet and broke his head. He got a terrible fever, it looked like he was going to die, but then somehow he got over it. Without any help of course. Only probably because he was a healthy, young guy, he survived.“

  • „Sometimes he said: 'I am now a perfect proletarian, because I have nothing at all. They only left me the shorts.' When they released him, he said: 'They released me from jail and I had nothing at all. Nothing!' He didn't even have personal clothes. He had no house, no furniture, no clothes, nothing. Just the shorts, he said: 'I'm a perfect proletarian.' I'm not afraid of anything anymore, what should I be afraid of? They have nothing to take from me.' And he was right about that. They deprived him of his property, of everything.“

  • „In those restitutions, we waited two years for the laws before we were even allowed to have them returned to us. And in the meantime, revolutionary things were happening. There was a state farm in Jaroměřice, the cooperative was not even established here, because my father and grandfather did not want to found it. So they didn't manage, ever. And there was a mess of a cooperative that went bankrupt, and they had to found a state farm here. And in those two years, there were huge transfers, when those who were directors were stealing, so they founded “eseróčka” (companies with limited liability) and all kinds of companies. They started trading shares - and we kept waiting. It was 1992, they finally approved the Land Act and we found out that the restitution martyrdom was just beginning.“

  • „The pressure was unbearable, they weren't allowed to employ people, they were left alone on the farm - just my father, grandfather and grandmother. That was all. His brother was gone, he was a trained civil engineer in Brno, and his sister, my aunt, was already married at that time and did not participate in the work on the farm. So there were three left in the whole farm. Of course, they had prescribed supplies that were disproportionate to even being able to fulfil what they were supposed to deliver. Well, it ended with the fact that in those harvests - at least that's how my father interpreted it - they had borrowed a thresher for two days and were supposed to thresh, but it was Sunday, so they turned off the thresher and went to church instead of threshing. That was the last pretext that the communists used, and they said, 'They had a thresher, they didn't use it, and instead they were in church all day.' Which is nonsense, because the mass lasts an hour.“

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    Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou, 13.07.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 02:47:10
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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The fifties were the biggest trouble for the whole family

Bohumil Loucký in 1977
Bohumil Loucký in 1977
photo: Witness's archive

Bohumil Loucký was born on November 18, 1962 in Znojmo. He comes from a kulak family. Father Bohumil and grandfather Ladislav owned a large farm in Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou. Both ancestors were sentenced by the Communists in the 1950s, the grandfather to six years in prison, the father to two years of forced labour in a camp near the uranium mines in the Jáchymov region. The punishment also included the confiscation of all property and a lifetime ban from the native Moravian Budejovice district (today Třebíč district). After his sentence expired, the father settled in Znojmo, where he worked in working class positions. After marrying a “class enemy”, Anežka’s mother lost her job as a clerk and worked as a cleaner. After elementary school, Bohumil Loucký attended the Znojmo High School of Horticulture, where he worked for a short time after graduating. Due to health complications, he earned a blue book and thus avoided compulsory military service. In 1983, he joined the Znojmo united agricultural cooperative (JZD), where he worked until the Velvet Revolution. He got married in the same year, and he and his wife Maria raised two children. He experienced the Velvet Revolution in Znojmo. After 1989, he started doing business in agriculture. In the 1990s, the family received confiscated land in Jaroměřice nad Rokytnou in restitution, on which Bohumil Loucký still lives and does business today (2021).