“We were the draught team. Yet at six o´clock we mined. Our breakfast was bread and black coffee. After a year we deserved a bonus for the afternoon snack. It was a tiny piece of bacon, thin as a finger. It was so hard that many times we didn´t even take it. When our passage blocked up in the height of almost 4 feet, we had to break through. I was a helper and my friend a pitman. What was blocked we had to smash through with pneumatic hammers to fit a drilling machine in. Then we took turns in drilling. When I was working and my colleague shoveled, suddenly a big rock like two bricks fell from the top and broke his leg.”
“I was in the military service for one year and yet afterwards my father had been liquidated. He managed to harvest by himself, the granary was full when the police came. One of the state security members talked to my father and said: ʻLet´s go on the road, on the street.’ They came there, the first car coming stopped, my father got on and was arrested. And the workers of the cooperative were already waiting there, since they were arranged to feed the horses and cows. They took the whole harvest. The corn and mangel-wurzel were still on the field when they began to crop it. As the first car stopped, the policeman came, took my father and said: ʻLet´s go to the prosecutor.’ And there they arrested him.”
“It was yet before the war. More people from the village were interested in that horse. My father said: ʻI won´t sell him, since if someone beats him, he will run back home.’ And he wouldn´t bear it, since he had that horse for twenty years. I rode that horse when we went to a fair in Lipany, where they bought him. He didn´t want to drag, so they leashed him. My dad told them: ʻI don´t want any money if the horse doesn´t drag, but try to tie the collar like this and he will. He either takes the collar off, or the carriage moves.’ However, since they roped him behind the carriage where more people sat, when they were passing the turn to Lužianky, the horse knocked the carriage and toppled it over. He already knew, he wasn´t on his way home.”
Jozef Sollár was born on February 13, 1930 in the village of Lehota not far from Nitra. In his youth he studied to become a machine fitter. On October 1, 1950 he enlisted in the compulsory military service. However, since being a son of the so-called kulak, he was assigned to the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP). In 1951 the family homestead of Sollár family in Lehota was forcibly confiscated, Jozef´s father was arrested and later on taken to labor at the state property. Until 1954 Jozef Sollár served in the PTP camp in Petřvald as a miner. After his release into civilian life, he settled down in Mlynárce near Nitra and worked in building industry. He retired in 1990.
