Miloslav Havrlík

* 1932

  • “The mill, as I said, was operating for full and it had to be running, when the farmers brought the cereals, as the situation was the same everywhere, flour was high in demand. The village provided for the towns. There were only few food-stuff to get for ratio tickets and everyone wanted to be better off. (Did you actually get in real trouble?) As I mentioned before, there was an announced check and I do remember how we all fast cleaned the cereals, which was extra. So that you could not find it. But all through the war there were checks. I remember there were women, mothers from the neighbourhood, coming around the mills buying flour. Mostly my mum was handling the business. She could sell as much flour as we got left. Three or five kilos of flour to anyone, who came past. And when there was no flower, there was simply none to give.“

  • “The thing was that the handicap played an important role at entering the technical troops. The physical and political too. My birth defect was of such nature, that under the usual circumstances I would not even have been a soldier, no basic serving military service at all. Therefore I blame the political reasons for it.”

  • “The communists promised to support small businesses. Our mill was no factory. It was just to make living. Maximally middle-size, but rather a small private enterprise. The mill got closed, parents were jobless, my brother too. He was actually threatened to get punished for keeping a construction material secret. That was quite common. If anyone was interested in the mill back then, he would have gone to prison and we would have been chased out completely. That happened quite normally. We had neighbouring millers, who ended up that way. During that period it was also quite common to make flat checks, and the whole mill was check for keeping stuff that was forbidden. And imagine, I kept my gun there...”

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The communists closed down the mill and we were glad that they did not chase us out

Miloslav Havrlík, forester
Miloslav Havrlík, forester
zdroj: archiv Pamětníka

Miloslav Havrlík was born on 10 August, 1932 in Lhotka near Lochovice in the region of Hořovice in the family, which owned a mill and fifteen hectares of land in the nearby Janov, at the river of Litavka. He had four siblings. During war the family lived under pressure made by agriculturists and the people, who purchased flour on the black market; on the other part the Nazis used to check on them too threatening by persecutions. Shortly after the communist putsch in February 1948 the mill had to close down and the brother was threatened by punishment for not reporting construction material for renewal of the mill. Due to political reasons the witness did not get to much-desired School of Forestry in Písek and started as a forester in the Křivoklátsko region. In 1953, again due to political reasons, and also due to birth defect he was sent to serve at the Technical troops in the Southern Bohemia in Rokyta, where he worked mainly in the forest. In 1955-1959 he studied distantly the Secondary School of Forestry in Písek. Until retirement he worked as a forester in Křivoklát, Příbram and Rožmitál. In 1964 he started a family. His nephew lives in the family mill of Janov.