"It was kind of hot. Some were for the cooperative, some were against. Those who had nothing were for it because they had jobs. Those who had some of the field didn't want to give it. Our grandmother caused great drama. Svatos didn't say anything. He said we couldn't avoid it because in Hana the cooperatives were already done, they had easier work there."
"So we came from school. They always told us to hurry. And when we got there, we already had a job lined up. They were digging potatoes in the field. The plow was going through and we were picking. As soon as the row was ploughed, we picked it up and then we raked it with the hoe. Or my dad would cut it with a scythe, and it would be laid down, so it had to be picked up right away. You'd make a bundle, and the bundles would come together, and you'd make a figurine. Eight or nine bundles were put together, one was put over the top, then it was tied. The tied bundles were put up, one was put over the top so it wouldn't get wet."
"He made such debts in the tavern that the family had no money. That was when I got married. Before that, he was the only one who farmed there, went to the pub and drank, so the land lost due to drinking. There were so many debts that the cottage would have to be sold. So my grandma saw there was no help, she'd have to move out, so she saved it. She started farming. She took money for everything she sold, bought things again so she could sow, plant. She saved until she saved it, so it stayed. When she was already farming, he died in forty-two, so Svatos, my husband was sixteen at the time, so he started farming too, and nothing was wasted."
She was born on 30 April 1931 in Valašská Bystřice under the surname Křenková. She came from a poor family with a small farm. Her mother gave birth to twelve children, four of whom died shortly after birth. The family survived the war unscathed, although her grandfather secretly brought food to the partisans in hiding. At the age of fifteen, she went to Varnsdorf to apprentice on knitting machines with the owner of a knitting company who planned to open a factory in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, not far from where she lived. After the communists came to power in 1948 and the nationalisation began, the knitting factory did not open and Zdenka had to return home from Varnsdorf. In 1951 she married the son of a farmer from the village of Vidče. She worked on the family farm. Workers from the Tesla factory in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm came to convince farmers from the surrounding villages to join agricultural cooperatives. Zdenka Petruželová and her husband joined one of them, even though her husband’s mother strongly disagreed. Zdenka then assigned work to individual members in the cooperative and worked as an accountant. In 2023 she lived in Vidč in the Zlín region.
