Jiřina Růžičková

* 1934

  • “They just took Dad to Zbraslav, to the trial, and sentenced him to five years in the Jáchymov uranium mines as an enemy of the workers, the working class, etc. People I had been at greeting terms with, who’d asked me things and I’d answered just days before - they crossed the street to avoid me.”

  • “[Q: And what about your family?] Well, our family... We didn’t have an agricultural cooperative here in Holyně, the last village of Prague-South District, that was when we were still Prague-South. Well, and then, I don’t know if someone snitched on us, or who sent them, but this one night we were woken up by stetsecs [State Security officers - trans.], who started inspecting our house. We had troubles with our hens that year, they were harassed by skunks, which tired them out, and Mum had difficulties fulfilling the supply quota they’d imposed on us. Well, but her sister from Mount Říp or thereabouts had married off to another farm and had enough eggs. So we’d go to her for eggs and take them back, so the number of eggs she was to deliver, she had those from her sister, who helped her with it. Well, but they came in the night just before the collector came for the eggs, so we had some three hundred eggs there, two full laundry baskets, and we hadn’t fulfilled the plan! So we were exploiting the working class, robbing them of their food.”

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    Holyně, 18.07.2014

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    délka: 47:47
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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People crossed the street to avoid me

Jiřina Růžičková
Jiřina Růžičková
zdroj: Jana Červenková

Jiřina Růžičková, née Brejchová, was born on 26 December 1934 into the farmer family of Brejcha, which held an estate in Holyně in what was then Prague-South District. Her grandfather was mayor of the village. During the war the Brejchas helped a partisan who was deployed near Prague and was injured. After 1948 Czechoslovak agriculture was gradually collectivised, and mandatory supply quotas were demanded from those who resisted. The Brejchas did not fulfil an egg quota, and the witness‘s father was put on trial in Zbraslav and sentenced to five years of hard labour in the Jáchymov mines as a kulak. The witness was only allowed to work as a construction labourer, although she later found an office job. Jiřina Růžičková is a widow and has two sons.