Miloslav Šimek

"He worked there all week and on Saturdays he would come to Holíč, during the Protectorate. And I have to remind you that on the Morava River, Morava divides Slovakia from Moravia, there were Slovak Financial Guard on one side and German Guard on the other. And the Germans many times... My mother used to say: 'They beat him again, they beat him again.'"

"To be very concise and simple: as an evangelical, we went to an evangelical church with my mom and dad and my sister. There was a Sunday school and I went there until I was a teenager. I went to confirmation at the age of 14, and then in 1953 in Zlín, in my temporary residence, an acquaintance of mine came there, his name was Mr. Štec. Although I had no deeper knowledge or education, I was a regular member of the Evangelical Church, he approached me, invited me to the Christian congregation in Zlín. There I heard for the first time about the need to change my life, turn to God and start a new life with God. This has fully applied in my life to this day. I get great pleasure and benefit from it, because I feel it every day even now in my old age, because I know that God knows about me and I know that, and that's important."

„I confess that my supervisor always said: 'Come on, Milan, let's make the altar there, right?' So it was a communist meeting. Of course, we had to do the decoration as workers. Preparation for the meeting and all kinds of comedy. Sometimes it was... somehow it didn't manifest itself very drastically in my life, but at that time I came to know my really true and living God and the Lord Jesus. So my manager said: 'Shimek would in the name of God set fire to the printer here too, so he has to leave.' Now they were thinking where to put me. I was too weak to work in the mines. They didn't take those kind of part-timers anymore in Let in Kunovice, in Otrokovice, so one communist thought up, but in a good way, that I would go to Dolní Rychnov in western Bohemia, where there was a glass factory where plate glass was produced. Those were large tables. I worked there as an observer. Well, no hard work, I just had to do shifts. My income was much higher than I could receive in my field. I was there for half a year and after half a year they called me back to the printing house because they needed me there. And so my great work career set off. Then I was known far and wide as an expert in the printing industry.”

"Every employee who worked for the Baťa company had to have an account and received a regular weekly salary for living. In addition, when he came and did not have an apartment, he was accommodated immediately. He got an apartment because Baťa built a lot of those red brick houses, which are still in Zlín today as a kind of historical document of the good living. Baťa took care not only of good housing. Working hours were 7 to 12, then there was a break for an hour, and then we worked from 1 to five 5. Then people could go shopping at a department store that was nearby. There was a shoe store that provided people with necessities... and all that for people. Baťa did his best. In order not to make it too specific, I can only say that these were the important things for life: to have a job, to have money, to have savings and to have everything that was needed. At that time, workers in the printing industry were the elite. Typesetters, printers, graphic artists, bookbinders. Having money piled up, one could go anywhere. You could buy whatever you wanted. And 500 crowns, that was a lot of money back then, and it was a weekly salary. But when there was a mistake, some glitches, Mr. Baťa was patient enough for that. The workers complained, especially in the shoe industries, that the circle was spinning too fast, that it was not enough to do the job well. So Mr. Baťa sat down at the circle and tried it. Was it fine? Nothing happened. Didn't it work? So he made an intervention. In that I saw, I would say, the social understanding of the company owner towards people. That he believed and trusted them. And if someone was lazy and didn't want to, nothing happened. He had to add. And when it really didn't work, the circle was delayed a bit."