Oldřich Sochor

“University of Veterinary was changed to a Faculty of Veterinary Medicine under the University of Agriculture in Brno. And there was this Operation K, as in Operation Kulak, when they expelled children of kulaks from universities. I have no idea how I got on the list but I attribute it to the assessment from Choceň where they had asked me about my enemies, because that assessment was extremely negative. And when I was summoned in front of a committee, I was reproached for working in Junák, for not having a job, for my father not attending political meetings, for my mother being in Sokol and supposedly shouting out anti-state chants in a Sokol parade and then not going to Sokol anymore and they blamed me for many other things too. I disproved one thing after another and I was doing pretty well and when I got to my mum, they said: ‘Comrade, you want to tell us that your mother was in the Sokol parade and didn’t shout anti-state chants?’ I told them: ‘She wasn’t in the parade, show me one person who saw her there. No one could have seen here because she was not there, so she couldn’t have shouted out chants. So what is this nonsense you’re telling me here? And when you say I don’t work: I passed all the exams from Marxism-Leninism with straight As, so what was I supposed to do? I’m in the Youth Union at school and I have straight As. What more am I supposed to do? Just now I was at a Youth Construction brigade (luckily, I really did go there). What else do you want from me?’ One of them told me: ‘Well, comrade, you might not be that bad. But two years among workers would do you good, then you’d come back all toughened.’ I said: ‘If I left school for two years, I wouldn’t come back there, I’d be old and would work for a living. It’s either school or nothing.’ Eventually they said I could stay in school. But they asked whether I talked about politics with my parents. I said no. ‘Well, comrade, you have to; we will check that out.’ But nothing happened after that, it all somehow faded away.”