Ludvík Rezek

"Then there was the Hamr around the lake, where - for the record - perhaps it was then mined, not many people know this, by chemical means, that is, they washed acid down there, because it was impossible to make normal trenches because there was sand. Thirty metres of sand, around the lake. All you had to do was pull it with a spoon and you had dredged for a canal. And on the other side they were pumping it out again. But it got out of hand, and there was an expert group of Russians here [in Ostrov] all the time, in those six-floor houses. But oh, sir, they were strictly disciplined! They had to ask the leader if they could have chess or beer. These were engineers, including the families here. And yet they were kept like that. There was a political commissar who decided whether you went for a beer or not. Well, they got in big trouble there because they had to make these big water barriers because it was getting out and it was eating everything up, as they say popularly. For example, the moorings where the two shafts were, they had to buy special ones from West Germany that could withstand the acids. What a lot of money! And you know, every year five billion is spent on reclamation after the Jáchymov mines. Five billion! Nobody ever says that, they've said it once or twice, otherwise they don't talk about it. Five billion. You know what a mess that was, washing the acid into the ground that dissolved the ores, and then pumping it out on the other side and mining it back out."

"My mother used to swear every night that she had to cover the windows. They would take away things like the butter bucket, it all had to be at school so they would hand most of it in and not leave anything at home. Clearly, it was no fun. But it wasn't fun afterwards either, they took those farmers, as they say popularly, on a stick, because later on the comrades wanted to force them to go to the JZD [unified agricultural cooperative]. So they gave them high benefits. For example, they couldn't just kill a pig, they had to have - I used to go around with eggs, for example - they had to have all their deliveries fulfilled, i.e. eggs from the hen, potatoes, and that was for a very long time, that was before the currency, that is, until 1953. Potatoes were taken to one place, there they got 60 cents a kilo and they sold them immediately for six crowns, that means ten times more! That was thievery. And they had to have all the deliveries fulfilled to get permission to kill that one pig. And even from that one pig they killed, they had to hand over three to five kilograms of lard, depending on the weight, and there was a special paper for that, which had to be taken to the butcher's shop. There they gave you a paper that you handed it in, and then it was okay."