The communists destroyed the family’s horticulture, the son’s dream of college too
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Václav Mizera was born on March 12, 1947, in Bílý Kostel nad Nisou. His father came here with his family after the war, during which he was forced to work for German factories. They took over a garden centre from a displaced German family here and managed it. When, after 1948, unified agricultural cooperatives began to emerge in the area, the Mizeras refused to join. They faced various forms of coercion and bullying, and their sales were falling. After they finally entered the cooperative in the early 1960s, their garden centre was destroyed. The witness could not study at a better secondary school or university for cadre reasons, so he graduated from an agricultural college. He spent two years in the army. During his vacation, on August 21, 1968, he experienced the tragic conflict between demonstrators and the invading Warsaw Pact troops right in Liberec. After military service, he joined the JZD (agricultural cooperative) and worked in various leading positions. After the Velvet Revolution in the 1990s, from the head position of individual agricultural farms, he dealt with privatization, and for a few years, he ran a farm in Oldřichov. The witness’ family requested the restitution of the garden centre – they were given back the land and the farm, but not the equipment. During the flood in 2010, Václav Mizera lost the house he had built near Grabštejn. He later built a new one and in 2022, lived as a working pensioner in Bílý Kostel nad Nisou.
