"My dad brought home a rifle and a red armband one fine day. He said it was the People's Militia. I was scared of the rifle. I still had memories of the war. 'What is it, Dad?' He explained: 'Don't be afraid. We won't shoot, but we'll have it ready if someone shoots at us.'"
"I was on holiday with my family in Strakonice in JZD Horní Poříčí. I always liked to go among the members of the JZD, to work in the fields and around the cooperative's farm. Just as they arrived, a night shift came up drying grain in the next village. There was a dryer, so we were drying. In the morning I came home at about four o'clock. We had already dried everything we were supposed to, so I went to bed. After a while my wife wakes me up: 'Vasek! The Russians are here!' And I said, 'Well, what do the Russians want?' I didn't understand. I hadn't counted on that at all. So she explained to me that we were being occupied. I couldn't understand why the Russians occupied us. And with that came the period of normalisation."
"The end of the war is a profound experience for me. My father was de facto from a communist family, because his brother was an instructor of the Central Committee of the Party in Domažlice and they were leaning towards the Soviet Union. When they liberated us, it was our father who was in some group that was formed like some kind of guard or something. He greeted it so boisterously that he woke up the whole village. When the tanks were coming on the other side of the Elbe, he thought they were coming to us. 'Folks! Wake up! The Red Army is here.' So we all ran up the hill above the Elbe, but it was only going up the other hill. They didn't arrive until the next day. Konev - or whatever general he was - who was coming from Moravia. It was a classic there. People came running to the village square. There was the best of the best. Dancing, music, hugs, flowers. In that May, the elderflowers and everything was in bloom. So we flooded them."
Václav Veber was born on 22 November 1937 in Záboří nad Labem into a family of bricklayers. In his native village he met both the occupying German army and in May 1945 also the Red Army. The liberation from the East led to his parents joining the Communist Party after the war, as they closely sympathised with the ideology. In September 1946, the Veber family moved to Františkovy Lázně, West Bohemia, to the house of the displaced Germans. Influenced by his building enthusiasm, young Václav entered a mining apprenticeship in 1952. Shortly afterwards, he was transferred to the secondary industrial mining school. During his studies, he met members of the auxiliary technical battalions at the mine before they were abolished in 1954. After graduating in 1956, he was assigned to the Eliška mine near Chlumčany, where he worked with prisoners convicted of political activities. When he started working, he joined the Communist Party, following the example of his parents. In 1968 he welcomed the reform movement. However, at the beginning of normalisation he became chairman of the vetting committee. He had no intention of doing harm, however, and so he did not fire anyone from their jobs because of their views. Shortly thereafter, he became head of the company, where he remained until 1992. In the meantime, he completed his higher education at the Faculty of Law of Charles University between 1974 and 1980. In 1989, he briefly became chairman of the Communist Party’s all-plant committee. After the Velvet Revolution, he witnessed a massive exodus of members from the party. After his retirement, he worked at the Environmental Department of the Regional Office in Pilsen until 2015. In 2022 he lived in Nýřany.
