Růžena Talagová

“I know that somehow they were vetting us too. An inspector came with some other person and we had to talk about what we thought about the current happenings and politics. Even we non-party people were dragged into it. Then again, party members had certain advantages. If you wanted to be in some significant position, you had to be a member of the Communist Party. Like, if you wanted to be a director or a deputy-director, they were all party members. Later, when I taught in Ostrava-Poruba and they had to constantly alter the number of teachers, who do you think had to leave? Not the party-members. They were protected. It was the non-party members who had to go.”

“We went to school with a girl from Baška whose father was a so called kulak. Once one of our classmates showed us a newspaper which said that he hadn’t joined the co-op and then something about his children walking around with flasks full of milk. We never understood what it was about, but that girl never did graduate. And when she was supposed to go to repeat the exit-exams, she said she didn't even go because there was no point, that she wouldn’t have passed anyway.”