Hedvika Fojtů

"It was not possible to come from school and go somewhere hanging around the village doing nothing, everyone just had their duty. For example, in the sixth grade, I had a note written on my desk that I had some lunch in the oven and a car is hitched for me and I should and come to the field here and there. And when I was riding down the road and there was a bus with workers, the narrow road... I was always very scared and the others thought that the horses were riding alone, because I was not seen in that car. So, each one of us had a task, and we didn't even consider it as some difficulty. We were used to it and we lived modestly. Regarding the supplies... and I can compare it well, because my aunt, who lived in Zlín, had daughters as old as me, so I often went there. When there wasn't much work, my parents let me go there for two or three days. And they ate pastry rolls with butter, sweet pastry rolls, cocoa in the morning and we ate dry bread and white coffee. And when the cows were before calving, it was more black than white, but we didn't consider it that way, because it was all done for us, we were actually farming. So, I know the difference between working-class children, because the money was certain there and there was always something left. And we basically couldn't even make the scrambled eggs, because all the eggs had to be handed in, and when sometime the cattle suffered from some disease, no one took it into account and allowed you to... They allowed you to make pig-slaughtering at home when you handed in everything they had prescribed."

“Of course, my mother didn´t want to enter the co-operative because in a village it was like this.. the one who entered first, he had only a goat at home. That means these people didn´t lose anything but gained a piece of land because they were given half a hectare of a private plot where you could grow potatoes or a bit of grain for your chicken, as the rest was taken away from you as part of the collective property. And those who wanted to establish a co-operative were the most ardent communists and now they simply had to force the big farmers to enter as well. Clear enough, nobody was too happy about this and right at this time, in the year 1956, my father died, and already then the compulsory supplies were inhumanly high. They wanted to force the people to enter the cooperative as it was impossible to fulfill these demands. If someone couldn´t fulfill them – these could be eggs or meat, exactly how much flax or potatoes, it had to be handed in. I remember the lovely potatoes we brought once from the field. A large cart full. I don´t know if you know what kind of carts these were but it was a kind of rack wagon which was full of sacks of potatoes and as they were lovely, off they went to the local school. So my mother brought them there and got 16 Kčs for 100 kilos.“