Bohuslav Rodovský

“We were so enthusiast after the Velvet Revolution, but then we became quite disappointed. When they were to return our property to us, or when we asked somebody to testify for us about the damage that had been done to us, people were avoiding us and they were afraid of us. Some people even refused to sign a testimony for us that we had owned that property. Some people even spoke against us and they created a pamphlet where they wrote that we had not had any property at all. This pamphlet was signed here in the village even by people who had not lived here at all at that time! We were then made to look as if we were liars who claimed something to which we had no right.”

“We shared all the problems of the members of Auxiliary Technical Battalions. They were shouting at us that we came there to atone for the crimes which our parents had done to the working class. They used maxims like: ‘If you fall, we will not raise you, but we will trod you even deeper into the ground.’ But we were young guys and we didn’t even realize that too much. Only later we realized that it was no fun, that they basically did not consider us to be humans.”

“From time to time some high-ranking officer would arrive. In the evening we would all have to gather in the culture room. They were persuading the priests to denounce their faith. They even tried to convince them to join the Communist Party. We were just watching it from the back. They kept talking to them, and then Dr. Pluhař got up. I can still see him vividly – a shorter man, almost bald, wearing glasses. He was the only one who was responding to them, nobody else from the priests said a word. He merely said: ‘I will ask the brethren.’ He turned to them. He spoke to them in English or in Latin. Then he turned back and said: ‘The brethren do not agree with it.’ The brothers were then just sitting there without saying a word, no matter how much the officers talked.”

“The minority cooperative meanwhile disintegrated. Over ten hectares were returned to my mother. It was done in order to get high deliveries from us again. I didn’t want to do it but they threatened me that they would not release me if I did not sign my agreement that I would return to work in agriculture. I had to do it, just like the others. I came home after Christmas, at the beginning of January 1955. But there was nothing there; everything had been stolen. And I was expected to farm there! About two days later, a black mare came there by itself. That was the beginning of my farm work.”