“There was this church in Radnice. And after I would scythe all the grass, soldiers would come to handle things, you know, and they would store all the hay in the church.” - “In the church?' - “They would store hay in a church. But the roof was in bad shape, so the rain would pour in, then it got overheated and the church just burned down. All the hay just ignited and the church burned down. And it was destroyed completely, you couldn't find it. As I went there to look for it – and all I found was bushes and weed.”
“We left Úhošťany because they wanted our daddy, well daddy, my father, they wanted my father to join the State Farm Agricultural Coop. And he didn't want to do that.” - “So they forced him to give up his land maybe?” - “All we had, we had to hand over to this state agricultural coop: our land and all the machinery, to this State Farm. Even our cattle. So later, after the revolution, we wanted it all back. And we succeeded.” - “And was your father given a letter of expulsion or something like that? Don't you know? How it went back then?” - “They gave him this list. Well, it was like this. My father behaved in a clever and a gentle way, as they were closing the books. As the State Farm had been taking over and they had to sort it all out. They had to know how everyone was doing. And we made maybe thirty five thousand Crown in profit back then. For the cattle and everything. And all the grain that we had in stock – it was all accounted for, thirty five thousand Crowns, as we were merging with the State Farm. But there were farmers who were at a loss as well. Next to us, there was this man, who had a thirty thousand Crown deficit, like that he owned them. So my father did a good deed and he paid all the money we got from them to cover his neighbor's expanses.`“
“He left because they had executed Mrs Horáková. At a Party meeting, he told them that the Party was no good, as they started executing women. So he left his membership card on the table in front of them. That was the end, as far as he and the Party were concerned.” - “Did it affect the household of yours, how did you perceive such a thing?” - “it did indeed. After we moved to Nejdek, there were policemen watching over us all the time. As there was this forest right next to us, so there was always someone watching over us, observing what we were doing. As we were living in this solitary house, so they were keen to find out what we had been doing there. So they saw just everything – a solitary house it was, with no net curtains or anything. So in the evening, they could see us, as we were gathering in the kitchen, observing what we had been doing, how did we behave and all.”
Ladislav Petrželka was born on August 8, 1937, in Hostákov near the city of Třebíč and grew up in the nearby village of Studenec. His father, Josef, a shoemaker trained at one of Baťa Company factories, had a house with a shoemaker’s workshop, but he was more interested in farming. In 1947, he decided to take over a farm in Vysoká Jedle near Nejdek in the West Bohemian borderlands, which was left by the Germans who were expelled from the country, where he started to make his living as a farmer. Josef joined the Communist party before the war, but after the show trial with Milada Horáková in 1950, he decided to leave the Party, so the family had been under State Security surveillance. In 1955, the Petrželka family was no longer able to meet quotas established by the Communist government to force private farmers to join the agricultural coop, and as a result, they left Vysoká Jedle. They moved to Úhošťany in the Kadaň region, once again to a farm abandoned by its German residents after the war. Ladislav had been employed at the Czechoslovak Forestry Corps – as a tractor driver he ventured into a military district of Hradiště, where villages left by their original German residents still stood. His parents had been farming their land in Úhošťany till 1961, where they had to hand over all their estates, land, machines and cattle to the State Farm Agricultural Coop. After 1961, the family settled down in Chodouň in the Beroun Region. His father, Josef, had been working as a store-man, while Ladislav had been employed as an excavator operator for the following fifteen year, working at Zdice Agricultural Coop. After the Communist regime had been dismantled in 1989, the family got the farm in Úhošťany back, yet they couldn’t farm the land anymore.
