Zdenka Blažková

"I wanted to stay at home. I wanted to be with my parents. I was not bad in learning, but I didn't learn as well as my brother. He learned terribly well. I also had Cs from Russian and Czech. I later learned that the children of the communists, if they had bad grades, then they had better ones. But you'll be surprised, only one communist gave me honest marks. This is also interesting. And I liked her. Mrs. Budíková. She was a true communist, the children didn't like her, but I liked her. She was the only one nice to me. I've loved biology and history since I was little – from that I got As - but I didn't do well in mathematics. I had C from it too. So, when I came out, I had about three Cs. My brother, on the other hand, did math contests. So, I stayed at home. I wanted to stay at home with my parents and help them."

"As long as we fulfilled, they let us be. When we didn't fulfil, they were making our lives unpleasant. We filled the quote once, and Dad had a trial because of it. They also invited people who also worked in the fields, for example on the beetroot. But no one spoke there against my dad. Those people more or less did not go against us. It was such a working class community and people worked there and saw that we were just working in the fields. We were not kulaks. According to them, the kulaks were rich. But when we handed in the goods, we did not even have milk left for us. Neither the eggs." - "You had nothing left?" - "No. We didn't have milk for the morning at all. We had black ersatz coffee. We really had nothing. Because my mother had to hand everything in. If she didn't, Dad would be bullied." - "You really had nothing left from for hard work?" - "There was grain left for the cattle. It was crushed for cattle. That must have remained. But we didn't have milk left. Really, I'm not lying to you. Yeah, they let us fatten a pig once a year."

"Have you ever struggled with being a daughter of a 'kulac' family?" - "Yes, at work. One gentleman started going there. He was there three times. But my dad told me not to talk. I already knew that I could not say anything during the Communist era. I was careful. The gentleman came and tried me. But then he stopped and didn't come there anymore. They knew about us all. We went to church and the communists they all knew it. For example, I went to Šárka to the midnight mass, because this was our church, and the mayor was watching who was going there from Lysolaje. That's how they controled."

¨"We rented it to them for free, but we didn't sign that we were donating it. Free rental agreement only. We did not have a collective farm, but only a state farm and there was farming. As soon as we stopped farming, I had to go work in that state farm. I'd been working there with women in the fields since April. And they were mean to me. You won't believe that. For example, my mother gave me a piece of bread for a snack, and one lady didn't have bread, so I halved it and gave her one half of the bread, and she said, 'So when are they going to move you out?' But they weren't all bad either. Or they told me to walk behind them. So, I had to go as the last one. My mother said to me, ´it is because of us.' And I didn't understand why. What did the parents do? To whom they did what. My mother wanted to work, so she enrolled for work in a freezing plant in Suchdol. But she was supposed to have a certificate and they didn't give it to her in the village. So, she got a job as a cleaning lady in Prague, where she didn't have to have this confirmation. So, she went to clean up. Dad was in the hospital and Fanda was still going to school."

"First, he sent the clerk to us, that the mayor would like to talk to me if I could sell something, and I told her to tell him to leave us alone. Then all the smaller farmers came to me and said that I was the only one left there who had the most land. Because those who had large plots of land no longer lived there. Next to us there was a state farm and further on it was almost empty. Or there was something else, but the people didn't live there at all. They lived in Dejvice. And those who had something, those had less than we did. And they came to me saying that I should not sell anything. I told them they could count on me that I would not sell anything. But they persuaded them. Just a neighbor who lived down the hill from us. Because he wanted money. Well, we have a lot of hectares, but the neighbor who lived down the hill from us had 6 hectares behind our land, where they would not get. Because if I don't sell it, no one will get there. He also did not want to sell, but then suddenly he sold it. They would give him a deposit of about a million and say that I don't want to sell it and they won't give him the money because of me. That's how they slandered me. And we were scared. Even the son did not go down there. We were afraid that they would kill him. We also wanted to move out so that no one could get us. We were afraid."