Eva Warausová

The mobilization in 1938 was horrible indeed. They took away our horses from the farm and chaos reigned everywhere. My father had to enlist in the army as a supplying officer. It didn’t last long and then the war came. Despite the ban on listening to foreign broadcast, my parents did so. I remember how my grandfather, upon the news that the Eastern front was getting better with Soviet victories, said: “Don’t you look forward to their arrival. I was a prisoner in Russia and I know how it looks like there. When the Russians come here, I am not sure if it will look any better than it does now with the Germans.” At that time, there were posters with some predator with bloody claws. Under it, there was a picture of Soviet paradise with a sign: If they seize you, you’ll perish. It was thought to be a propaganda but after all, Communism and Nazism were almost the same. Only Communism left more people dead as it lasted longer. During the war, we had to fulfill mandatory levy from our farm. It was precisely said how much we needed to deliver based on the number of acres and animals. But these payments were determined so that we could make it. Once the Communists took power, they set the mandatory levy so high that it was impossible. They only did it in order to destroy the class.

When we returned home, we realized that the Russian troops moved into our farm. These were such primitive people! They never saw a flush toilet or water running from a water tap. I remember how one officer was standing in the middle of the kitchen and his subordinate brought him water from our well. And the officer was washing himself so that the subordinate was pouring the water on him right where he stood even though the tap was right in front of him. Before we arrived, they naturally drank all they could find. My mum had cut glass and they poured whatever they were drinking inside. And every time they finished a drink, they threw it behind themselves and broke it. We didn’t lose much but the behavior was simply unbelievable. We weren’t used to such things. I remember that there was a German officer staying at our place. He was behaving so that we didn’t even know he was there. It was an exceptionally honest man, because he came to warn us against listening to the foreign broadcast as he found out we were listening. When he was leaving to the Eastern front, he came to say goodbye and showed my parents the pictures of his wife and children and said he didn’t believe he was going to come back. Of course, nobody liked the Germans, but the difference was unbelievable.

In 1945, when the war was coming to an end, there was an air-strike on Vysočany, Kyje and Satalice on Palm Sunday. My father used to come to visit his mother and brother in Satalice on Sundays. On that day, my father went there as usually with my sister. They wanted me to come with them but I told them that I had to go to church on Palm Sunday. During the air-raid, everybody ran to the fields as they thought that the pilots were going to target buildings and factories. But they used these little fragmentation bombs so the most of the wounded were on the fields. My father had his hand crushed and had some minor injuries on his head too. My sister was hit with a shrapnel to her shoulder and thigh. As the bomb rotated, it tore out some meat from the thigh. She lost a lot of blood. I don’t even know how my mum managed to get the truck that took her to Český Brod as the hospitals in Prague were totally overcrowded.

My father “sold” the farm, but it was a “sale without payment”. It means that the state takes it over, but gives nothing in return. It is a rather interesting term. Back then, the Communists used the new-speak as Orwell used it in “1984”. The words simply lost their meaning or had a totally different one. So they took over the farm and because my father had his hand injured, he couldn’t work manually. Therefore he was hired in a grocery shop in Horní Počernice. My parents didn’t stay in the apartment for long as they were moved to an adjacent house that had a roof in a terrible condition and windows that didn’t fit tightly. One room was uninhabitable as windows were on two sides and the wind went through it all the time. So during winter, it turned into a store. There was one toilet for three apartments in the hall with a sink. It was a terrible shock for my parents. At that time, many precious things were completely destroyed. Nobody cared about the furniture even though these were real antiquities. It was all chopped into pieces. We didn’t have many precious things as my father spent all his money on the farm. It was a really great farm and it was well kept. Every year we whitewashed the stables and cowsheds. Every year the roofer came and checked on the roofs if they were all right. When we handed it to the State farms, it was in a perfect state. But the State farms managed to do terrible things with it in quite a short time.

The year 1948 was a catastrophe, I remember that very well. But back then, it used to be said that it was going to last three years only, until 1951. I know that one of our friends was in Switzerland and my father wrote her to stay there and wait for a while. He thought it would break in 1951. Obviously, nothing happened, but nobody imagined that it would last for such a long time. We just lived in these provisional measures, thinking it was going to last for some limited period of time. And then I remember the processes. It was just unbelievable. We were listening to their confessions and thought that somebody must have drugged them. Nobody had any idea about how horribly cruel the Communist investigators were. But in the case of Slánský, we thought he deserved it. He and Reicin and these people did terrible things as well. So nobody pitied them. And why did you think it was going to last for three years? Since the end of war to the Communist coup, it was three years. So maybe it was why people thought that another change would come in the next three years as well. It was some kind of hope that it was not possible that this would last. How did you feel when instead of change, these processes came? People resigned. And they were afraid, too. The fear was horrible.