Marie Janatová

* 1941

  • "You know, he was thin, as he was a peasant, but they were getting paid for their work (in prison), so they bought margarine for their bread. He came back as a broken man. We had an old house with a thatch roof. And when my father was arrested, they wanted to confiscate his property. When they saw the house, they realised there was nothing to confiscate. Before I started making money, my father would deposit the money he made into mine, my brother's or his wife's account, keeping just his checking account, which was quite smart, otherwise we would have lost all the money. After he came back, before the holidays, his sister came, my aunt Říhová from Kruh, and we said we wanted to build a house and we had arranged a meeting to see if we could build on another meadow. She said to my father: 'František, don't do it, there's Mrs. Boukalová's farm for sale in Kruh, come and see it.' So he went there to take a look and they arranged the purchase. But we had to give our house in Nová Ves to the state, so we moved to Kruh. Two and a half years later I got married there."

  • "My dad, well he probably said something against this bloodbath that took place in Hungary in 1956, against this massacre perpetrated by the Russians. They used to meet when there were milk deliveries ... so someone, we know who, said that to him, that it was sedition. They didn't like him very much, so they arrested him in 1957." - "Do you have any recollection of that?" - "I don't, I was at school in Hradec, my brother was at home, farming with my mother and father. And in the fall of 1957 I was expelled from school."

  • "The fifties were worse for me. I didn't live in poverty, we had money, but there was a currency reform in 1953. And my dad lost half a million, so we had to start almost all over again because he needed to buy little piglets. So he borrowed money from his maid, Lenka Nosková, so that he could buy them at all, because he had lost almost all his money. If you had more than five thousand, the exchange rate was one to fifty." - "What about collectivization?" - "My parents didn't want to join the cooperative because it was so small and it had been controlled by the communist youth. So we didn't join the cooperative."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Kruh u Jilemnice, 12.03.2017

    (audio)
    délka: 32:01
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
  • 2

    Jilemnice, 09.12.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 39:12
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

They didn‘t want to join the Agricultural Cooperative, the communists imprisoned the father, and expelled the daughter from school

Marie Janatová in 1950
Marie Janatová in 1950
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Marie Janatová, née Blažková, was born on 15 January 1941 in Nová Ves nad Popelkou. Her parents, František and Marie, had bought a farm there four years earlier. The farm was doing well, but the family lost a considerable part of their savings due to the communist monetary reform in 1953. Her parents refused to join the coop during the so-called collectivisation. As a result, her father was imprisoned by the communist regime on the pretext of publicly criticising the Soviet suppression of protests in Hungary. Consequently, the witness was expelled from a high school and had to work on the family farm. Her brother had to serve in the army as a member of the auxiliary technical battalions. For over two years, in the absence of her father, she and her mother had to take care of their family farm. After he came back from prison, the family moved to Kruh near Jilemnice, and after some time, they joined the local agricultural cooperative. There, the witness worked as a cashier, and she also met her future husband, Jan Janata, who also came from a peasant family persecuted by the communists. After the Velvet Revolution, Mr. and Mrs. Janata regained both of their family farms and decided to combine them and farm with their son. In 2022, Marie Janatová had been living in Kruh u Jilemnice.