Jaroslav Sixta

* 1936

  • "Four communists and four policemen split up and started marking an inventory of both all living and inanimate things. And inside I was walking the hallway with one of the pairs, in the first floor they looked for gold and deposit books. They searched through all of the dressers, pots, stockings (they were knocked against the ground to see if anything was hidden inside of them) and so on. When they searched the entire house, they found nothing. My father and my older brother were walking with them around the courtyard, writing down all the cattle, all the carts, and so on. I was a big pigeon breeder, really purebred ones. I took care of them, they were my great love. All in all it was about twenty pairs. They were locked in a chambered pigeon loft. Father defended me, saying: 'Those aren't my pigeons, they're my son's and don't belong to the estate.' One of the communists called on me to open and take away the padlock. So I removed it and he took one of his own from his pocket and locked the loft. He told me: 'This belongs to the state, it's being seized.' Which hurt me the most, because it could be said that that was my hobby and my love."

  • „Komunisti opravdu... to bylo na poslední chvíli - vešli čtyři komunisti a čtyři policajti, abychom jim dali vkladní knížky a zlato, a že nebudou nic hledat. Výsledek byl ten, že moje maminka řekla, když stála za mým mladším bratrem: 'Tady je moje zlato,' a ukázala na mého mladšího bratra, čím vlastně nelhala ani trochu. Moje maminka upozornila jednoho z komunistů: ‚Co jste se k nám nachodil za války! To jsme vám byli dobří. S vajíčky, s mlékem, s máslem, a teď najednou vy se chováte k nám takto špatně.‘ A on odpověděl: ‚Paní, časy se mění, časy se mění.‘ A mému otci byla dána malá bumážka velikosti A5, v níž bylo napsáno několika větami, že se statek zabírá se vším příslušenstvím a že my se musíme vystěhovat do pěti dnů a že se budeme stěhovat na náš výminek.“ "The communists really... it was at the last moment - four communists and four policemen walked in, that we should give them the deposit books and gold and they won't search for anything. The result was such that my mother, standing behind my younger brother, said: 'Here is my gold,' and pointed to my younger brother, by which she really wasn't lying not even the slightest bit. She warned one of the communists: 'Oh how often you came during the war! We were good to you then. With eggs, with milk, with butter, and now suddenly you're being so horrible towards us.' And he replied: 'Misses, the times change, oh the times change.' And they handed my father a small document of about size A5, in which there was in a few sentences written, that the estate with all its equipment was being seized and that we would have to move out within five days and that we'll be moving onto our replacement."

  • "And so it came to pass that on the 16 April 1951 the peasants were gathered in the local high school and there the communist committee professed that, due to collectivisation, the peasants will be relocated from their homes. In the committee, that sat at the front, was also a friend of my father's, who had used to often play chess with him, and he towards the end went to the bathroom and told my father to follow him. In the bathroom he warned my father: 'Don't go back in the room, run home quickly. We'll be looking for gold and deposit books!' That's what he told my mother. There was a great confusion in the apartment; we were trying to find where we could stash everything. We had very little time left, so in the end we hid all the deposit books and all the gold with my younger brother Přemysl in his pants, in his pockets."

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    Velim, 23.04.2021

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    duration: 02:06:40
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Deny me like Peter had denied Christ, or you’ll never get anywhere in this godforsaken system, my father had always advised me.

Jaroslav Sixta, graduation photo, 1958
Jaroslav Sixta, graduation photo, 1958
photo: archiv pamětníka

Jaroslav Sixta was born on the 28 March 1936 in Velim near Kolín. His parents farmed on an estate with about 36 hectares of fields, which had belonged to them since the 19th century. During World War 2 a part of the family was involved in the resistance movement. In 1942 they were meant to hide the parachutists from London that were meant to assassinate Reinhard Heydrich. The Sixta family had even built them a special hideout. However, his mother got scared at the last moment and refused to take on the risk. His cousin Miroslav Vojtěchovský, who had negotiated the hiding of the parachutists, was executed by the Nazis. After February 1948 the communists started to harass his family in relation to collectivisation. In 1951 they nationalized both his house and estate and he was forced to move to Kouřim. His father was sentenced to half a year in prison under the pretext of failing to supply the milk quota. The mother of three then moved to Nespek u Benešova. Jaroslav couldn’t study, being the son of a landlord, and so completed an apprenticeship in a sugar mill. He later studied at an electrotechnical industrial night school in Prague. He worked in, among others, the Uranium Mine Project Institute. In 1968 he emigrated along with his wife and three kids to Vienna. Afterwards he gained asylum in Canada. They settled down in Montreal, where he had family. He started to make a living there as a maintenance worker and later worked as oversight on construction sites. He got into a project agency and took part in the project Hibernia for mining oil in the Atlantic Ocean. He also functioned as a construction inspector on an airport construction site in Kenya. After the fall of the communist regime his family was returned their homestead in Velim as part of the restitutions. Jaroslav Sixta repaired the house and has started to return there. In 2021 he lived alternately in Montreal and Velim.