Jaromír Petlach

“The horses became no longer needed. They were in stables; everyone had some horses. They needed to be fed and cared for, and all this cost money. The number of horses was thus being reduced. My father was already quite old, and there were younger people. Only some pairs of horses had been left here. The committee decided that our horses would have to go. We had two horses. We were to put them away. But what do they mean, putting away a horse? It is not so easy… My father arranged it with a slaughterhouse, and one day in the morning he got up and readied the horses and we said good-bye to them and father walked them to Brno. He brought the two horses to the slaughterhouse, he handed them over to, well, to be killed, and then he returned home. We were sad about it, of course, because the horses had been part of our family. But that was the way it happened, and nothing could be done about it; it was a part of the collectivization process.”

“A maxim of my life? I didn’t even have any. But our parents have been teaching us since we were little children. There was a church here, and I liked going there for the Rorate Mass. It was at half past six before the school started, and we would take part in the Rorate Mass and then go to school. We have been raised this way since we were little, and going to church was therefore no problem for us, they did not have to make us go there… we enjyed going there. We were singing in church, at that time everything was in Latin, and each of us had this little book, because the mass was celebrated in Latin. There were also the large missal books, with large letters, and the gospels readings were written there…So that was the order of the holy mass, and there was a lot of singing in church, too. Now they sing in church as well, but back then there was a lot of singing. There were beautiful songs and everyone liked singing them; we thus enjoyed going to the church. Our mother taught us the Ten Commandments, and we had to pray every day (…) The Ten Commandments actually contain the entire law, and if somebody wants to live honestly, no other laws are needed, because everything is there. You can live with a clean conscience if you follow the Ten Commandment. We did try to abide by them. Although there is no doubt that we are sinful, but at least we tried to live by the Commandments, and it was like a moral principle for me to live my life honestly… That was all.”

“‘Let’s plough away the borders between fields!’ They were all overly enthusiastic about it. The cooperative in Slušovice began operating. Slušovice was a model cooperative, with a chairman who had all resources at his disposal and all the support he needed. They wanted to establish the same system in all the other cooperatives, whether the conditions there were suitable for it or not. They wanted to have cooperatives everywhere and unite all farmers. They were persuading them one by one. The local officials did not have the skills to persuade somebody. Therefore they sent in some specially trained commissioners from Brno. These officials were calling on the individual farmers in the region, holding talks with them and persuading us how great things would be. If you remain an individual farmer, you will have high delivery quotas. Your work will be difficult. Just look at the cooperative in Slušovice; just like them, you will own everything collectively, and you will enjoy wonderful life. All the work will be mechanized and everything will be great. But it was not so easy. Each farmer had his little plot of land and they were used to working on it in their own way. But now the officials were persuading us to join all the fields together. Fine, so we shall share the fields. It took one year; I don’t remember if it was in 1957 or 1958. But they eventually began to force the farmers… there was certain pressure. They threatened them and the farmers were afraid. They were considering all the possibilities and fearing what might happen to them. The older farmers began to hesitate, they were uncertain, and they started joining the unified cooperatives. The first members of the cooperative basically did not have anything, but they did sign up to join the cooperatives and expected to work there. The farmers were waiting to see what the other farmers would do and who of them would sign it. They would bring you a document to sign - you had to sign an agreement with joining the cooperative. Farmers around us began signing it, too, and father then… We were sitting here and he was not sure whether… Then it all began… the pressure became really intense. They even took one farmer – I don’t remember his name any more – to Brno; there was a lot in stake, and it was not easy. One by one they were signing it, although with troubled hearts… I can still see the father, his hand shaking when he was signing the document. ‘To sign it for the cooperative!’ It is as if he had signed his death warrant.”