Ladislav Ševčík

"Later, when I was an apprentice at Železnobrodský skľa and just after the war, the representatives of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia summoned me up. After half an hour they said, 'Where were you on holiday? You must have been somewhere and seen the boom of our socialist republic.' I said I was in Romania. And they said, 'Well, you see... What does that mean, Ceaușescu, the palaces and the coast...' And after five minutes like that, they asked how I liked it. I said, 'Well, you know, I was in the mountains, in Caliman, and when we came down, you couldn't even buy a little fish. They didn't have anything at all. To tell you the truth, I don't see the rise of socialism there as real as you're telling me about it.' So they took the files, shut up, and said we're clear, and goodbye."

"They [the glass masters at Železnobrodský Glass] were quite bitter and angry, it was quite delicate. Sometimes something would come out of them at snacks or at celebration or maybe even at parties, so you could talk to them about things like that. It hurt these people in a crazy way, they lost all their possessions and everything. Their children were forbidden to work in the glass industry, they were not allowed to go into the glass business. In this way, they [the communists] liquidated whole generations of glassmaking families. That was very unpleasant and some of the guys took it very hard. It's a delicate and painful place to tell in terms of our history. When you consider that we were very fortunate in that there were guys who could work glass from the beginning with all the right stuff. And we've discarded them, we've buried and walled everything up. That set the glass industry back."