Ing. Dobromil Podpěra

“About ten years ago, inspired by a story of Václav Beneš Třebízský ‘Mr. Odolén Pětipeský’, I decided to find out if our family tree really reaches as far back as the year 1600. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get that far into the history of our family because I couldn’t find the needed documents. The oldest member of our family line from Neprobylice who is reflected by the records, is allegedly Václav, who died around the year 1701. I wasn’t able to find the exact date of his birth but his son, whose name was Václav as well, was born in 1668. He thought that his father had been born in 1640. It was the time of the Thirty-year war and Neprobylice was burned down. Václav was a landlord and the innkeeper in the nearby village of Kvílice. The one who returned back to Neprobylice was Jan who had been born in 1714. He became the founder of the Neprobylice line of the Podpěra family. The records from the 18th century are in my view rather chaotic. In the times I’m speaking about, there were three or even four families by the name of Podpěra living in Neprobylice. Each of them, however, lived in a different manor. In these times, the houses weren’t numbered, yet. Therefore, I assume that around the year 1780 one of the Podpěra families lived in house number 9. In 1771, house number 5 was bought – that’s the house where my brother, Jiří, is currently living. It’s a pity that my mom has donated our family Bible (the Kralická Bible issued at the turn of the 17th and 18th century) to the museum in Třebíz from where it got stolen. At the back of it, there was the very precious purchase contract for our manor that is priceless in terms of historical value.”

“We were supposed to start our compulsory military training on August 31. However, when they arrested my dad in 1952, I suffered a nervous breakdown and I was allowed to begin my service half a year later on February 28, 1953. The service in the PTP units amounted to training with a pick and a shovel, allegedly in order to enable us to join the building of Communism after we return from our service. These units were made up mostly of sons of peasants and businessmen. In the beginning, when these units had been established, even older generations of inconvenient social groups were called upon to join them. It was for an unlimited period of time, so-called extraordinary military training. The commanders assured them that this training could be expanded indefinitely, even till the end of their life if the ‘state and the army needed them’. In this way, a former landowner and peasant from Otruby, František Hořejší, was drafted to such an extraordinary military training. He served with the 5th company, in the 63rd PTP, where he died tragically. I was lucky because I only spent two years in the PTP as they were abolished on April 30, 1954, and incorporated into the TP (technical battalions). Thereby the E classification (politically unreliable) was abandoned. I left to civilian life on February 28, 1955. There were two types of PTP. You had the ‘light ones’ whose members worked on various military or civilian construction works. Those of us who were assigned to ‘the heavy ones’ were sent for work in the mines.”

“The land reform that was introduced in 1919 was a milestone provision that influenced the post-war development in the villages. The reform affected plots exceeding 150 hectares. Contrary to the land reform of 1948, the land was not expropriated but sold and everyone had the opportunity to buy some land under very favorable conditions. From a social perspective, this cooled down the tensions in the villages somewhat. It also strengthened the position of the Agrarian party. In our village, the greatest interest in land was on behalf of the peasants from Kutrovice. As far as the peasants from Neprobylice are concerned, they took some of the fields behind our estate in the direction of Libovice. The first land reform in 1924 (The first land reform was defined by the general appropriation law enacted on 16. 4. 1919. The most intensive period of the reform was in the years 1923–1926, the reform was, however, still in progress in 1938) led to the creation of a residual estate which was managed by Mr. Snop. This residual estate counted about 70 hectares of land that was left from the original 200 hectares. In contrast to the second land reform, the land wasn’t expropriated, but had to be bought. The price to be paid was, however, quite reasonable and everybody took only as much as he could reasonably afford. From the earned money, a part went to the state and another part went to the original landowners that had to pay a tax on it. In 1948, the Communists promised a so-called land reform. This land reform meant that the former owners were given a scrap of paper and the new ones were forcibly driven into the kolkhoz at the moment they took over the land. The first land reform improved the living conditions of the so-called deputatniks. My father rebuilt their flats. He built an additional room to the room that made up the flat originally. They also had access to the cellar and to two little sheds for their poultry or pigs.”

“After February 25, 1948, so-called action committees of the National front were constituted. The situation in rural areas began to escalate. According to the secretary general of the central action committee of the National front, Alexej Čepička, the purpose of the newly established action committees was to carry out a vigorous purge in the new establishment. The situation in the villages was made even worse by the collectivization of the farms. The peasants who wanted to keep their property and to farm on their own were penalized by absurdly high levies on meat and crops. You still had the WWII allocation system in place that had been introduced by the Germans. The Germans were known for their attention to the details and the system had certain rules. It was based on a ten-year statistical average yield of the harvest of different crops and of the livestock. After 1948, the system was ‘improved’. The levies for peasants were determined individually and sometimes were up to thirty percent higher. Therefore, the peasants were left with hardly anything after they delivered their levies. They didn’t have the fodder for their livestock and therefore they couldn’t deliver the levies on the livestock. It was impossible to comply with the norms. The levies were set by the local village authorities and the levies for the local Communists were ridiculously low which meant that they could sell their produce on the free market where the prices were much higher. Non-compliance with the levies was penalized by high fines; the non-payment of these fines meant the loss of property and imprisonment. It was used for propaganda purposes. Leaflets with images of defaulters were distributed in the villages (see the attached leaflet). The newly created Tractor stations (STS) were supplied by tractors and farming machinery that had been ‘bought’ from the peasants. Many resigned and joined the collectives. In 1952, my dad was taken away directly from our thrashing machine. After we had harvested our crop in August 1952, we moved the machine for two days to the family of Mr. Artl. Because he owned less than 10 hectares, it stayed at their place for two days and was then moved to the Dundrov Family. By that time, all the machines had been already collectivized but our family, together with the Artls and the Dundrovs, created a sort of a small collective, and therefore we could use our threshing machine. The national committee got the order that in places, where the crop had been harvested, the land was to be plowed. There was a drought and my dad was afraid that they might plow the field too deep. Therefore he put pins around our field to indicate that it should not be plowed. Somebody reported it to the chairman of the district national committee, Václav Švarc. In 1953 we were ordered to leave our family manor and to move to the village of Luníkov – the place where they put inconvenient peasants. Dobromil Podpěra was arrested on August 11, 1952. He was sentenced to five months of prison and a fine of 20.000 Crowns for ‘upsetting the national plowing plan of a Tractor station’. The original plan was to arrest František Snop from Neprobylice first but he was lucky enough to die in time (1950) and his wife handed the farm over to the collective. The arrest of my father sparked off a vigorous political campaign in the village. The Communists succeeded at scaring the people and literally driving them into the collectives. Before my dad appeared before the court, three months passed. I was twenty years old and was called before the court as well to give my testimony. Once I was slapped for speaking too much, the next time I was slapped for speaking too little.”