Květoslava Blahutová

“Gottwald died and I had to photograph the memorial ceremony on the town square in Vítkovice. What an experience. The bosses from all factories from the ironworks were bringing wreaths there. And I was standing there with the camera and I had to take a picture of each of them. There was a kind of a green shed, and it served to suggest a tomb. Inside there was a portrait of Gottwald and people were laying wreaths there. Several guys from each factory, and wreaths and ribbons.”

Interviewer: “Did they want you to become a member of the Communist Party in your workplace?” - “Several times. I was a candidate for the station’s commercial deputy. But I would have to join the Party and I have never done that. ‘You are against yourself,’ the chief told me. But I would rather hoe a hectare of the cooperative’s beets field alone than to join the Party. And that was it. Nobody then came to me anymore, because they knew that they would not be able to convince Blahutová.” Interviewer: “Why you did not want to?” – “Because dad was doing forced labour in Glogau during the war. And when he returned, he did not have anything. Not even a thresher or a grinder. He had to obtain all this with great troubles in order to be able to farm again. And when he acquired all this equipment, the Unified Agricultural Cooperative came and they took everything from him. Because he was a kulak.”

“The Russians wanted dad to harness the horses into the buggy and take them to some officer. But on the outskirts of the village they hit my father with a rifle and they pushed him down from the buggy and they went away without him and the horses were gone with them. Dad came home and he was crying. A Russian commander was resting there on a bench and dad was begging him to do something. ‘It’s war. I cannot do anything,’ shrugged the Russian. We have never found out where the horses ended. They killed cows and all animals, and then they fried and boiled and baked the meat. Only the innards were left scattered around the barn.”