Václav Schreiber

* 1940

  • “I took a piece of paper, and as we came to the dining room, I walked around. I told them he knew what was happening and how we cried back in the 1968 and all these things. I said I'd set up the Civic Forum and whoever wants to join. We then wrote requests for our manager and sent them to Šumperk. Then about a week later we contacted ČSAD Zábřeh and ČSAD Šumperk. We were gathering powers. The same in Vranová Lhota. There, I let the accountant called Květa announce that people meet at the constituent meeting that we are setting up the Civic Forums that there will be changes and so on. I have the impression that eighty-three people came and that over fifty or over sixty signed it right there.”

  • “They kept coming and pestering, knocking at the gate. Eventually a few signed and a small cooperative was formed. The others were raised their ratios to give up. We just had to plant linen, a ratio of the poppy had to be given away, we had to ask to kill a pig, which was quite a procedure. Much had to be given away; twelve pounds of lard, plus eggs. They went to the house to count hens, currants, fruit trees and wrote everything down. Of course, they took the forest and cut down trees wherever it occurred to them. Machines were confiscated. Dad was taken his trading licence and got no compensation for the machines or electricity. At the time, he had bought iron ten or twelve thousand to work. Not didn’t get a penny for it.”

  • “Then came the February, and he became a class enemy, a exploiter, because with his own hands he fed a family of seven along with his parents. They took everything from him and he could be glad they hadn't locked him up. All the time they was following him, because someone stuck somewhere a piece of iron and broke a machine, so they first ran to the blacksmith if he put it there or who took any iron from him. They've been investigating him several times.”

  • Full recordings
  • 1

    Vranová Lhota, 08.11.2018

    (audio)
    duration: 50:13
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Vranová Lhota, 04.01.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 10:01
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 3

    Olomouc, 09.04.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:55:35
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
Full recordings are available only for logged users.

Dad suddenly became a class enemy, a exploiter because he was feeding his entire family with his own hands

Václav Schreiber
Václav Schreiber
photo: archiv pamětníka

Václav Schreiber was born on 22nd September 1940 in Vranová Lhota as the youngest of five children to his parents Josef and Anna. The day before the end of the war, the Germans nearly shot her father and two brothers together with all the men in her native village. They survived, but three innocent men paid their lives for the death of a German soldier, among them the cousin of witness Jan Jirauch. After 1948 his father nationalized the blacksmith’s workshop and all the machines. Václav Schreiber also witnessed the establishment of a local united agricultural cooperative (JZD) and the systematic oppression of local farmers. All family members had problems with the communist regime. The eldest brother Josef got married to a large farm in the village Bezděčí and under enormous pressure had to join the local agricultural farm and lost his farm. Sister Marie and brother Zdeněk had difficulties in their work due to their class origin. In 1949, another sister, Anna, joined the religious order of the Congregation of Merciful Sisters of St. Karel Boromejský. In 1952 she and her other sisters were deported her to the Trutnov region, where she had to work for several years as a worker in Texlen Trutnov. Václav, too, had trouble getting admitted to studies. Eventually he trained as a blacksmith. He then worked as a blacksmith and subsequently at the ČSAD. Václav Schreiber was aware of the totalitarian character of the communist regime all his life. Shortly after November 17, 1989 he founded the Civic Forum in ČSAD Mohelnice and also in Vranová Lhota, where he was elected a mayor in 1990. In 2019 he still lived in Vranová Lhota.