We could only take as much as would fit into an Avia
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Alena Šustková, née Nimsová, was born on 25 January 1941 in Radonice nad Ohří in Louny District. Her family owned a farm there with 24 hectares of farming land. During the rural collectivisation, on 4 May 1953, the people’s tribunal in Louny tried her father on fabricated charges of endangering the united economic plan and sentenced him to four months in prison and the loss of all his property. On 16 July 1953 the whole family was then expelled three hundred kilometres away to Vikantice in the foothills of the High Ash Mountains. All members of the family had to start working on the local state farm. But they were still not safe from persecution, and the local functionary supposedly tried to frame Alena’s father for some further crime. In the end her father was sent to four more months of prison in April 1954 for “stealing Socialist property”, and again in November 1955 for six weeks on the same charges. But this was still not enough, and so on further fabricated criminal charges during a public hearing on 18 February 1959, he was sentenced to five and a half years in prison and the loss of all of his property. The family lost everything again, including their savings. In 1970 Alena Šustková moved with her husband and children from Vikantice to the small spa town of Lipová-lázně, where she still lives today.
