Libuše Fajkošová

“The chairman of the national committee came from Hukvaldy and said: ‘We received a message from Žermanice that you’re an enemy of the state, that you’re dangerous; but we trust you, because we see you’re doing a good job and the administrator speaks highly of you. I was in Místek and the local broadcast was calling out: 'Josef Fajkoš, best worker of the state farm, helped fulfill the harvest quota and we have successfully completed the harvest.’ Such paradoxes. One time this, the next time that.”

"So we didn't have a thing. In the end, not even mentally... For instance that secretary and the party chairman woke us up one night, they started banging on the windows, they got in through the garden - and I heard this with my own ears: "You kulak, watch out, we can throw you out of here any time, or we can hang you from the closest tree." That’s what I heard.”

“Then when the English landed at Normandy, they hid - he and two or three Poles made an agreement, in a barn somewhere, and they joined the French partisans. Unfortunately, [the French] also didn’t have the means to get them to our army, which had formed meanwhile in England, so it took some time - they took them to London. There was a camp in London, and from the camp they were sent with the Czechoslovak army all the way to Dunkirk.”

“They even moved a family in there from Havířov, a homeless lot, and they made a nasty mess of it. We were afraid they’d tell on us. It was quite a young family, a miner he was, but they drank terribly, an alcoholic family. They didn’t do much work, and when Dad returned and they were still working there, they would make a fire for themselves in the barn and roast sausages. So [Dad] was afraid that if it burned down, they’d lock him up again. It wasn’t easy.”