Václav Procházka

* 1932

  • “Each platoon had a political worker who was supposed to reeducate us. Those people were completely ignorant. Sometimes they taught university graduates and they were almost illiterate. They knew nothing about education, just the political bullshit.”

  • “Have you become a member of the Communist party? Did they persuade you to enter?” “There is a story. It happened when I came back to the Horoměřice collective farm and they held meetings of the Friends of the Soviet Union Association. Our political worker kept on persuading me to enter the Association and when she really didn’t know what to do, she asked me in public at an annual meeting in front of almost the whole staff of the collective farm. ‘There is only one person left who has not yet become a member of our association. Mr. Procházka would you like to enter at last?’ And I told them in front of the directors and the whole farm that I would never join such a bunch of rascals. And of course that was another misdemeanor. And it always followed us.”

  • “Regular political schooling was a part if the military service. It was lead by political workers. They kept on telling us that we were the trash of the society and that they will reeducate us by work and that we would not go home before we would be completely reeducated. They vented their inferiority complexes on us. The meetings were held every evening. We came from work tired and they started with political education. We were gathered in the room for meetings and they started telling us tales abut Russia, about the Russians and their inventions, that they were far ahead, that they could conquer the weather and nature and similar bullshit. Russia was a ideal with all its inventions and beauties. We were supposed to be reeducated to think the way they do in the Soviet Union.”

  • “Of course they put me to the worst collective farms that there were in the district. The first year I worked in Ovčáry near Kolín that was definitely the worst farm in the district. Then I married and they had to transfer me near Horoměřice to provide me with a flat, – I worked in Noutonice, Prague-West. I spent another year there. The third year I worked in Kopanina. The director was a great comrade but the farm production was a disaster.”

  • “In Karviná I was transferred to the disciplinary unit and our task was to fill mines. Those were jobs that nobody wanted to do, so they gave it to criminals. That was a terrible experience. They took us to the used mines which were supposed to be filled with waste rock. The shafts were only about 50-60 centimeters high. Imagine, that for the whole shift, the whole eight hours you couldn’t stand up. You had to lay down on your back and shovel the rocks all the time. We were in a row on the shaft and a civilian who worked with us brought carts with rocks. He just poured it out and if we didn’t shovel enough he would bury us under the rocks. So we had to shovel no matter if we wanted or not. A horrible job.”

  • “We were suitable as a cheap labor, almost for free. We had a wage but it wasn’t very high. They distracted half of it. We had to pay for our army service. And half of the other half went to a depository account, so we got the quarter that was left as a mercenary pay, a wage. And how much it was? After the two years I had twelve thousand on my account.”

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“We had a political training. When they asked us something we parodied it. And their ‘intelligence’ was so high that they didn’t even realize that we were pulling their leg.”

9_civil.jpg (historic)
Václav Procházka

Václav Procházka was born on 23rd November 1932 in Horoměřice where he lived most of his life. His mother worked in the agricultural industry, his father, the chairman of the local branch of the Czechoslovak National Social Party in Horoměřice, worked at the town council. After 1948, he was accused of misappropriation in a staged trial. The accusation was not confirmed but since then Mr. Procházka and his wife were transferred from one job to the other. The police was subsequently interested also in young Václav. He was not allowed to study at the school he wanted because of bad political references. After several unsuccessful attempts, he had to choose a different school - an agricultural technical school in Kadaň. Soon before the graduation exam, he was called to service in the Auxiliary Technical forces (PTP). He joined in October 1952. He served for twenty six months full of hard work and dull political schooling which the regime used to brainwash its enemies and their children. He passed through the basic training in Děčín. From the very beginning the PTP soldiers were treated as human trash and told that they need to be reeducated and cultivated. Václav Procházka was transferred to Pilsen where he worked as a stoker at the construction of military facilities and then he was transferred to the tar layers. In the fall of 1953 he was transferred to Karviná to fill up the used shafts. At the PTP, he worked at several mining positions. The soldiers at the PTP didn‘t have any fixed period of the service, it depended on working performance, political testing and the ‘reeducative‘ potential. Václav Procházka left the PTP in 1954. He immediately finished his high school education. After the graduation exam, he had to work at positions to which he was assigned by the agricultural production committee. He spent three years working for the worst collective farms in the district. He was constantly politically evaluated. He worked for two years at an airport and then he returned to Horoměřice. He never entered the Communist party and until retirement he worked in worker‘s positions as a lorry driver, a grocer, a caretaker, en electrician a helper in a research center. After the revolution he was rehabilitated and refunded in the nationwide rehabilitation of the victims of the regime. He is a member of the PTP association. He does not feel that the service at the PTP would have caused him any health damage, but he admits that it was both physically and psychically demanding and it could at certain conditions affect someone‘s health.