František Zatloukal

* 1948

  • "We had such a beautiful horse, I cried for him, he was in the cooperative farm for a long time. He was an Arabian thoroughbred, he just walked like a doll, he was walking, his head up. A lot of times the horses would come out of the field all sweaty, but not that one. That was a white one, that was Pluto, then we had a brown one, they were paired together, that was Zuza. And then we had a black horse, that was a lighter horse, that was Iva. And that was just before the currency reform and my dad sold Iva, the black one. Some guy came with a saddle, so he saddled her up, paid my dad, I don't know how much, and my brother and I got five hundred crowns of so-called tail money. So we got the five hundred and a week later there was currency reform, so there was nothing left. So that's kind of my memory."

  • "I might not be here anymore. I was in Žižka's barracks and then in Sochor's. There were a lot of barracks in Olomouc. And some of them were always on duty at Garňák, the military prison. And I just got a commander of the guard. The garrison at Envelopa, as the garrison house was. And we'd go in, all with field equipment, machine gun, mask, bags, high boots, in camouflage. A guard commander, a sergeant, and two guards, so four of us walked down that Envelopa. And now, as the Russians were coming, suddenly a light machine gun, we were going down the Envelopa, and now the Russians were coming, so we were hiding behind the chestnut trees. And when they went past, we ran into this prison and the prison was empty, there was no prisoner. And after a while, a phone call, if we've arrived, not to go out anywhere, that they'll come for us from the company. Because they had forgotten or they had reported late from the garrison that our soldiers were not allowed to go out with weapons. Well, fortunately, he was just spinning that light machine gun, it didn't go off. If it had, I don't know."

  • "That was a huge house, that was number three and four. There was a lot of stuff in there. A huge library, she had books and all kinds of things. There were beautiful paintings hanging on the walls, painted plates that big, this Mr. Coufal was a hunter, so there were rifles hanging of all kinds. It was very nice. But then the comrades somehow liquidated her. Unfortunately, she ended up in Šternberk. They sealed the house and then took everything away, the beautiful furniture that was there, there was almost nothing left. I don't know if to some party secretariat or where, nobody will ever know. Psychological pressure, they forced her to go to the milking parlour. She took care, she still had a sick older sister. When she was three, their mother died in childbirth. Her father never remarried and raised her actually as a boy. She used to go to Olomouc by bicycle, as there was this school of Count Pöttinge, so she used to go there by bicycle, because buses - there was nothing like that then. She was very involved in all these movements. She was a deputy of the then Revolutionary National Assembly, she was the first mayor in Moravia, according to the French press even in Central Europe."

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    Svésedlice, 09.04.2024

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    duration: 01:52:55
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There are some things that can’t be confiscated. My great-aunt’s land passed to the communists, but her legacy remains

František Zatloukal
František Zatloukal
photo: Witness´s archive

František Zatloukal was born as the second of three children on 21 January 1948 in Svésedlice. His parents Marie and František Zatloukal were farmers. His great-aunt Ludmila Zatloukalová-Coufalová, who lived in the immediate neighbourhood, was a feminist activist, a member of parliament and, as mayor of Svésedlice, the first woman to head a local government in Moravia. František learned farm work on the family farm from an early age. After the forced collectivisation that affected his family in 1954, his parents worked in a cooperative farm. He did not lose contact with agriculture even later. For political reasons, he was not allowed to finish secondary school. He therefore trained as an auto mechanic and completed his education later in the 1980s. He worked all his life in the cooperative farm in Velký Týnec. After the revolution he was involved in municipal politics. He had four children. In 2022 he received the Medal of Merit 1st degree in memoriam awarded to his great-aunt Ludmila. In 2024 he was retired and was living in Svésedlice.