"My father got three years and my uncle got three years. But my father, he was hot-tempered. Hard to say, hot-tempered, but he was right about everything and he was strict. He didn't go along with everything they threw at him. It was a very hard time, and our father couldn't understand that he would get three years in prison for nothing. And he got those three years, too."
"Once my father had a lawyer, his name was Dr. Vesely, as I remember him today. He told him, 'Mr. Vaclavik, you have to take it that you have to be charged and you have to get at least three years so that they can take all your property. So that they can take the workshop and the back workshop.' My uncle, I mean my aunt, had to repossess half of the forge down the road when she wanted to live there, because half of it was forfeited. Dad got three years. It was a terrible time."
"And the next day the police came and started to write everything down. I was studying at home, so I immediately rushed upstairs to my grandmother's , where we used to live, because we lived where the offices were supposed to be, as there was no place to live. So I rushed home and they searched our house. And I'll never forget those words till the day I die, when they said they wanted gold, deposit books or cash, and my father said, 'This is my gold, my hands, they make the gold. But I don't have any gold.' Valuable things, jewelry and watches... My father showed the watch and I added: 'This is from the grandmother, she bought it for his twentieth birthday, it's an old watch.' They took it."
František Václavík was born on 22 February 1943 in Nová Paka. He spent his childhood in nearby Lázně Bělohrad. After completing his primary education, he started an apprenticeship as a blacksmith in Benešov. He did his apprenticeship in the blacksmith’s workshop of his father and uncle. In 1959, however, the forge was nationalized. The Václavíks lost almost all their property. In addition, František Václavík senior was sentenced to three years in prison in a mock trial. In 1960, František trained as a blacksmith and joined the Road Machinery and Equipment Company in Nová Paka, where he worked until his retirement. He died on 26 November 2022.
