Anna Zasadilová

* 1935

  • "Was your husband in the war?" „He was in the technical auxiliary battalions, in the mines, not uranium though, normal mines. Just when he was there, he got severe infectious jaundice. This also undermined his health. And then he said, well, he didn't like it there, in those mines.“

  • "Did you ever believe that your property would return, that something would change? -No, never. That probably didn't occur to us. So it's not worth much, but the boy manages. -Do you remember November '89? What did you do, how did you perceive the changes? I mean, when the revolution happened and communism ended? -When communism ended, you know, I was just old.”

  • "But on May 5, there were SS men, with horses and cannons. In Bukovsko, people were eager and hoisted flags. The commander arrived and said if they would not take down the flags within a quarter or half an hour, they would make Bukovsko into Lidice. And then they left immediately. They wanted to go to Prague, but they didn't let them go in Veselí, they drove them to Jindřichův Hradec. And then they said they might have set the convoy on fire somewhere. “

  • Celé nahrávky
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    České Budějovice, 13.03.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 01:01:10
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Collectivization divided people in the countryside

Before Kovář's mother's injury: sister Marie on her grandmother's lap, mother Anna Kovářová on the right with her little sister Zdena in her arms, father Kovář on the back (1928)
Before Kovář's mother's injury: sister Marie on her grandmother's lap, mother Anna Kovářová on the right with her little sister Zdena in her arms, father Kovář on the back (1928)
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Anna Zasadilová, née Kovářová, was born on January 18, 1934 in the South Bohemian village of Hvozdno, where her parents owned a 15-hectare farm. In 1949, the witness graduated from a nine-year primary school and began working on her parents’ farm. After the communists took power in February 1948, farmers in the village faced attempts at collectivization, were faced with high demand, and bullying by Bolshevik apparatchiks. In 1954, Anna married Jan Zasadil and their daughter Hana was born. The husband also came from a peasant family in Hvozdna, and with his parents cultivated twenty-four hectares of land. In February 1956, the Communists confiscated all the assets of the Zasadil family and the whole family had to move out of the village. This definitely broke the resistance of the peasants in Hvozdno to forced collectivization. Other villagers, including Anička‘s father, joined the United Agricultural Cooperative (JZD). Anna, her husband and his parents spent the next ten years at the Světlík state farm near České Budějovice. In 1957 their son Jan was born, seven years later Jiří. In 1966, the family moved back to her home village, where Anna worked at the local collective farm. She and her husband raised three children. After 1989, the Zasadils regained their property in restitutions. In 2020, Anna Zasadilová lived on her farm in Hvozdno.