Libuše Tůmová

“If you weren’t a Party member, you were constantly accused of not doing enough. Say, I would get these messages from the district school committee that I was not doing enough extracurricular work. And yet everything you did had to be done for free, and I started taking note of it, and I would have as many as twenty-five different events outside of school in a single month. Attending meetings in Semčice or wherever, Boleslav, managing children’s clubs, doing... extra Russian tuition outside of normal lessons and teaching at people’s courses of Russian, and the like. That was all for free and it all took time, but it didn’t give you anything at all.”

“But it affected my husband; my husband had to - he was accepted into the savings company and was there only a year, and then in 1947 they issued a decree and 75 thousand clerks were reassigned to production, so he was made into a blue collar, and he was sent to Semčice, where he was tasked with stacking some sacks of grain. Stacking as in putting in order. And the poor mite had really sickly hands at the time, but he had to suffer through this punishment. The only thing that saved him from this hard work - because he was continuously ill from it - was when they founded the farming co-op in Jabkenice. And because Jabkenice knew us, they wanted my husband to keep their books for them.”