Miloš Kypta

"I was called before the national committee, where I showed them the book and they said: 'You are ending with the Kypta company.' And so I said: 'I am ending with the Kypta company, how should I understand that?' And now they poured out those speeches of theirs on me: 'You do not understand (I am not sure if they were informal with me), that something like this is happening here. Here ended the exploitation of one person by another, like forget about it, that you will be some sort of licensed businessman. Here is the stamp, you are ending.' And so that was how it was made concrete. Father also worked out an agreement with another colleague, who had a tailoring business, I do not know, if they had caught wind of it, and somehow he bent to the comrades, but they would not make him the manager there. And so he had a workshop and I ended up in that workshop. I have to say, that that was not something, which I would have chosen, but I was there. I did not stay there for very long, because father had lots of contacts everywhere, and so something came to his attention. They said: 'Look, make sure to clean that boy away somewhere, he will end in the mines, there is a drive going on.' There was a drive for workers going on, about sixty or eighty thousand people into industry and into the mines. And that made sure, that all of these uncomfortable people would go into the mines. Well and father told himself, that we have to do something, that you cannot end up in Ostrava in the mines. And so in the end I was cheered, that I stepped into industry by myself. I found myself a place in Aero Radotín at the metal cutter and so with that I had taken the wind out of their sails. I was already in industry and so they could not touch me, the mines therefore escaped me. And that was also an exclusive factory, there they made the fuselage for Russian jets and there were all of the same cases there like me. I stood at a machine there, well-behaved, and greeted the person beside me. He said: 'I am doctor Stránský'..."

"We were always away over the weekend and we had a, well I have to also mention this, not a maid, my parents were sensitive to that. Maid seemed to them as degrading to her. She was a helper in our household, as we always dutifully said. And so this Anča had her own little room with his and helped us, because we needed to clean up the rooms, when the workers left, and so on. For example she helped mother in the kitchen and so on. And Anča, when we came home on Sunday from our trip, was sitting there crying, the poor dear, and described to us, what had happened. The Gestapo had broken into our house for a house inspection, if we did not have any partisans, or what they wanted to see, we do not know. And because our father had to lock that one room, he explained it to Anča. He said: 'Anča, it is not against you, of course you know, that you can go anywhere, walk, but if a thief came and I did not have this room, where I have fabrics, where I have the money register and all of that, I have to have it locked. Otherwise the insurance company would not give me anything. And so that one room was locked not because of that and not because of you, just so it was clear.' And, well, they, when they could not get into it, because of that it seemed to them suspicious. And so that beautifully modeled brass door handle, it was an apartment with three metres forty high ceilings, the tall decorated doors with that ballustrade in front of the doors, beautiful. And so they broke off that door handle."