Milan Hlobílek

“It was in the decisive year 1948 when the communists got to power. I remember that we were threshing grain and there was a member of the communist party who was standing there and counting the bags. He was quite dumb because he still could not get the correct number. So that was my experience with fervent communists who were so dumb but who had power and they fiercely applied it. When they got to power, before the election, they separated all the eighty hectares of lands which we owned. Father requested some land, and so they left a couple of hectares to him and he farmed there for one year in order to provide a living for us. The other land was worked on by other farmers. Obviously, a year later they confiscated the land from all of them and that was the end.”

“I received a letter from my father, telling me not to go home because they would move us, but he wrote that he did not know yet where and when. About two weeks later I received another letter in which he wrote me where they had evicted them and where I was to come. I arrived from school to the Haluzice stop and my father was waiting for me there. We walked over the hill towards the house. It was in early spring and we started in late afternoon. We came to Jestřabice and father said that the distance to the house was now the same as what we had already covered. We continued walking and it was getting dark and we were almost in the forest. I asked where we lived and father said that we lived there. I asked why there was no light on, and father replied that it was because there was no electricity, only kerosene lamps. The room was about two steps under the terrain and it had a dirt floor and two small windows, a stove in the left corner and one three-part closet, a table and two chairs and two beds and a bench. I asked where I would sleep and why they had not brought my bed. As father was loading my bed onto the truck when they were being evicted, the official told him that he should not take the bed because they would take care of me. I thus slept on the bench and then I constructed a bed and filled it with straw. It was desperate.”