Josef Vaněk

"They were already putting farmers under pressure by demanding huge contributions that we couldn't meet; it was far worse than under the Germans. They required grain, eggs, butter and everything, and it was just impossible to deliver. Then they started taking land away from those who didn't comply, fining and threatening them. My uncle told my mother to have me quit working on our land, otherwise we could run into debt, and advised her to have me work in Vítkovice instead. I still worked on the farm after my shifts for one more year. I would come home from Vítkovice after work and toil in the fields with my mother."

"When I was a little boy I went to Ostrava with my dad. That was during the German occupation. We rode a locomotive from Kyjovice to Svinov. My dad had to have a passport with my name written in it. We got off in Svinov and changed to a local train. There was a customs office on the Svinov bridge, and I recall the Hitler Youth were marching by, carrying the Nazi flag in the front. My dad was wearing a hat and he didn't take it off as a salute. One Hitler Youth member knocked it off his head and scolded him in German. That's exactly what I remember. The border between the Sudetenland and the Protectorate ran through Svinov. Ostrava belonged to the Protectorate."

"The landscape was completely different before. There were small groves and tall balks between fields with shrubs slowing the wind down. There were wet spots and marshes providing water reserve for long stretches of fields. Afterwards, though, it was all ploughed and levelled. When it gets windy, the wind blows dust up and down across the fields. They ruined everything."

"When the cooperative was formed, we had to surrender everything to it - the cows, the grain, the feed, and then the farmers had to work there. Farmers Juchelka, Žurek, and Byma carted the feed from the field, mowed using scythes back then. They had to do two or three rounds. One day, the hay got mowburnt and the women who were cleaning the sties fed the hay to the cows. It made the cattle sick. The men were arrested for sabotage. The jurors weren't farmers. They also arrested Vaněk for running a private sawmill. Even though they took it away from him, he would Vanek still going out there and supervise the work, so they arrested him for sabotage for that too. They were behind hte bars for two and a half years under the communists."

"The nuns taught us diverse preschool stuff. They played with us, we had to sleep there, and it was the same as today's preschools. But there weren't many of us kids there because not everyone could afford it. There were four nuns and several priests. It was across the street from the church, so it was just a short walk home for us."