“We (my mother and I – ed.’s note) then arrived to the place, I think it was Ostrov near Karlovy Vary or Loket; it was somewhere there. We arrived and there was a house; I remember that it was a wooden house, but I don’t know if it was made entirely of wood. There was a corridor in the house, on the right side there was a room and people were handing their visit permits to the officer who was inside. On the other side there was a room which was divided by a wooden plank from top to bottom, a kind of windows were carved in the plank at the height of your face (I don’t remember how many). I remember that they were bringing in the prisoners behind this partition. We walked in from the other side, from the side with the warden and the permits, and we walked inside from that corridor. I remember that there were little wooden stairs under this opening, and they were for children so that they could reach to the window and be able to see their relatives (mostly parents).”
“At the end, when the delivery quotas were already high, it was difficult to meet them. I remember that farmers who were friends were helping each other. If somebody had greater harvest, he would help another farmer and register it in his name. Somebody else helped my dad; one man gave him carrots. This way they were helping each other. But still there were some crops which were impossible to deliver, because the quotas were being increased all the time. I remember that we had about 100 hens in the yard, and my sister and I wanted to make scrambled eggs for supper. But my mom and grandma would always say: ‘Girls, bear it a little longer until we have met the delivery quotas.’ I don’t know how many more eggs were still needed to meet the quota. ‘When we have delivered, you will be able to have as many eggs as you like.’ I remember that my mom’s brother who farmed in Hostenice would always criticize my dad for being naïve whenever I complained that we had a full yard of hens yet we were not able to take a single egg for ourselves. ‘Come on, you don’t allow your girls to cook even one egg for themselves. If they want to, they will put you to prison anyway!’”
“It was on December 8, 1952 when the trial in Roudnice was held, and the sentence read: ‘He is found guilty and is sentenced for the criminal act of sabotage based on Article 85 to the penalty of imprisonment for two and a half years, for the criminal offence of abuse of proprietary rights based on Article 133 to the financial penalty twenty thousand Crowns, and in case of failure to pay, to a supplementary penalty of imprisonment for additional two months. Based on Article 43, the accused - and this pertained to all these kulaks - forfeits his civilian rights for the duration of five years. Based on Article 47, all the property of the accused will be confiscated by the state (that’s actually why it was all done). And based on Article 53, the accused is forever forbidden from residing in Brozany.”
Marie Merhautová, née Borecká, was born January 15, 1941 on a farm in Brozany n. 2. She recalls the transports of people to Terezín which were passing through Brozany during World War Two. After the war she experienced the forced collectivization of farms and the tragedy of their neighbours and relatives who refused to join the Unified Agricultural Cooperatives. Her father was arrested in 1952 and sentenced for sabotage to two and a half years of imprisonment. He served his sentence in Jáchymov. Marie is probably the only person in the country who holds the title “The Shock Labourer of School Work.” In spite of this appreciation, due to her negative personal-political profile she was not allowed to study and after 1955 she worked on her parents’ farm. She was a kulak’s daughter and she experienced the forced eviction of her parents from her native Brozany. From 1956 she worked in a railway station restaurant in nearby Roudnice nad Labem and in the evenings she studied a school of economy. She was subsequently employed in the company Restaurants and Cafeterias (RaJ) in Litoměřice and in 1968 in the Municipal House in Prague, where she experienced the dramatic events of August 21, 1968 and the subsequent Soviet occupation. In 1970-1980 she was a housewife, in 1983 her husband died and then she worked as an accountant in the Culture Palace in Prague and in 1990-1994 she worked in the theatre Semafor. After 1989 the authorities returned the family farm in Brozany to her. Since 1997 she has been living happily as a retiree in her apartment in Prague 4 (as of 2016).
