Zdeněk Zůna

“People born in 1928 and 1929 or 1927 and 1926 had the duty to build the trenches. Germans promised our parents that we wouldn´t cross the Protectorate´s borders. And they took us to Olomouc, to the railway station. There, they would get carriages ready and we would go to Silesia. So they didn´t fulfill their promise. I recall that the boys would throw those padded backrests from the windows. They were throwing them out in protest.”

“I enjoyed very much the period from 1945 to 1948. As I felt so free and everything was just fine. But one didn´t have information or the news were being distorted. For example, I would hear that students were marching to the Prague Castle (Pražský hrad). It might be at the time Gottwald went to see the President. I was living at a dorm, as I already graduated from gymnasium. So I went out and saw this policeman. So I told him I heard this and that regarding the students and asked him whether that was true. And he told me: 'No, we didn´t hear such a thing.' So I was quite naive to ask a policeman about such a thing. And he was quite unfair to lie to me like this.”

“After that, there were these official screenings being done by the the local Party committee which workers had to pass after being summoned. And the most important question was whether you agreed with the invasion. Whether it was a good thing or not. And of course, they would ask me this question. So I said I didn´t agree with that, that no one should interfere in our affairs. So the committee decided – I got it in writing and I still have it in my possession – that I should be expelled from the Party. Which meant not only had I been expelled from the Party but I was also persecuted. So not only that I could no longer work as an instructor at the (Okresní osvětový dům), as after some time, they decided that I couldn´t be employed there at all, so they just fired me. So I was looking for a job and it had to be a blue-collar job. And after trying for maybe seventy-seven times, I finally got this job in Karlštejn.”