Jan Janata

"They wanted to evict my father in May 1953, they must already have obtained a lot of signatures. But they came to a lady who had about four hectares, a small farm, they were meeting every obligation, they managed, two healthy people, no problem. When they came to them and they wanted the signature - people were afraid of the Bolsheviks, they would rather evict this Janata to have peace and not worry about it - but this lady was a devout Catholic and she was telling people, 'We can't sign because of the children.' Two years ago, when I went to the archives in Semily to look for these kulaks, I found out that Dad was still being registered [as one of them] in 1958, and from 1 January 1958 the cooperative farm started for the second time and for real."

"It was very unpleasant once. There were relatives and some support was needed for them too. The first two war years were terribly wet in the Podkrkonoší region, so there was a problem with the harvest. The straw was dusting, so what was surplus they put in boxes into bags, and covered it with this straw. My dad thought that if it raised dust, they wouldn't want to dig in it. But this one (the inspector) was good, he just found a convenient stick and pierced the whole straw. He started systematically from one side, and if he had pricked one more time, he would have been on the box. It would have turned out really badly for Dad."