František Čuban

* 1941

  • "When it didn't work out, they threw a shotgun at us in the barn. My dad went to the barn for straw in the evening and picked something up with a pitchfork, so he pulled it out - a shotgun. He threw it into the sludge, and the next morning the same ones came as they came for the tractor, in the leather jackets like the Gestapo. They went to the barn to find a shotgun, but found no shotgun. So, they left, it was a horrible experience for me, I was there. When they didn't succeed this time, they took my dad. Suddenly, they picked him up and took him to court. He was held there for two days and under pressure he signed an application for a collective farm."

  • "He put everything in there, of course, and had to start working for the State farm. Then, he was driving there with his tractor, they let him. My father wasn't very happy, he was cursing all the time, but he was smiling, and it annoyed them a lot. He went through the whole Kosmonosy and he smiled at all the communists, at that Lipenský, Baloun, Buben, they called him the Grey Wolf, who was such an asshole. I think that was why they came after us like that and kept pushing us into a corner. But they didn't break my father."

  • "Suddenly, the director called me again, the ranger just arranged it, and the director says: 'We can't keep you employed, Mr. Lipenský doesn't want it.' He wants you to go to the State farm. They learned this from a State Security officer who was spying on me, and I said to myself several times, 'Hergot!' Someone always followed me as I walked from Kosmonosy to Debr to get on a train. I was going to get the train on Mondays, I was always coming back on Saturday, I was going home on the weekends. So, they tracked me down, they fired me, but I didn't give up."

  • “…I had about twenty-thousand kilometres of experience as a driver, and I have passed some psychological testing. Meanwhile they were arranging my passport; I had to have about fifty passport-size photographs made for visas to all European countries… When all this was completed, there was a phone call from the manager who told me that he did not wish me to work as an international truck driver. When I came to work the following Monday, I got issued an old truck and I had to work as a driver only within Czechoslovakia.”

  • “My parents could not do anything about it. It was an absolute power. Whatever would my parents do, it would get greatly exaggerated... I was in the fifth grade of elementary school and it was in 1950.”

  • “When I was a child, I did not perceive the pressure as I do now. There was a lot of pressure, but I thought that it was normal. Now I see that not everything was all right back then.”

  • “We had a little field behind the house where we grew everything we needed. We had hens, rabbits, and a cow, and we thus had milk from the cow, and we made butter, curd cheese, and all milk products at home. We had hens in the yard, and a pig…”

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A dekulakized peasant smiled at the communists. Then they took revenge on his son.

As a young man
As a young man
zdroj: Archív pamětníka

František Čuban was born on February 20, 1941 in Kosmonosy near Mladá Boleslav. From the age of seven, he carried the brand of the class enemy - the son of a kulak. His father was one of the largest farmers in the village and refused to join the unified agricultural cooperative (state farm). Eventually, he was taken to a court and after two days he was forced to sign an application to the collective farm. However, the local communists still hated him and took revenge on his son, who was forced to join the collective farm and they prevented him from doing any other work. The witness graduated from an agricultural school in Horky nad Jizerou, but refused to join the state farm. After the military service, he got married, moved to Bakov nad Jizerou and started working in ČSAD (Czechoslovak State Automobile Transport) in Mnichovo Hradiště. When he started driving a truck in 1969, he was banned from driving abroad by a telephone call from the Local National Committee in Kosmonosy and they transferred him to domestic transport. Until his retirement, he was working as a driver at ČSAD. After 1989, the family restituted only a part of the original farm, which František Čuban finds as injustice. In 2019, the witness lived in Bakov nad Jizerou.