Emil Melioris

“I was born on April 25, 1931. When being six years old I started to attend the elementary school. I did quite well and since I was one of the good students, my parents decided to send me to grammar school in my fifth grade. However, to my own detriment, in the sixth grade I joined an anti-state organization led by my schoolmates in Spišská Nová Ves. Sometimes I feel like laughing, other times like crying when I recall how naive we were. We thought that such common students can contribute to depose the regime by such actions; actions literally including also an armed rebellion. And in the end the group leader quarrelled with our teacher, who wanted to give him a bad mark, that he even threatened him with a gun. This way it all got out. At first, the leader was arrested. From the very beginning I criticized the fact that they blew up the railway near Markušovce using the stolen dynamite. Thus I completely lost all my will to cooperate in such things, as it was obvious it was not right to act this way. However, I got to prison in Košice, where we stayed on remand for about three weeks. I was in a solitary confinement in the State Security´s office, being all day so hungry that I had painful squeals in my ears, what was the worst punishment ever. I was so down, that thoughts like hitting the wall with my head were coming to my mind. So badly I wanted it to end. Yet, much worse thing was that I got expelled from school. I decided to deal with it by working. I got a job. There was a mine in our area and they were hiring workers quite gratefully. Thus I stayed there and worked in a mine for 15 years. Later I worked in a railway company for 13 years. I was also at the joint cooperative for a year, but it was so miserable, in such condition that I refused to work there. I said to myself that not money is worth of me labouring there. This cooperative didn´t have a chance. When I wanted my salary, I had to go and find the head of the district office. But we didn´t settle anything there either, so we passed to the Party´s district office. There we were given a cheque, which I brought to a bank. The bank could not use it for anything else, but our salary. It was really begging for own money from month to month and thus I quit and left back to Rudňany mine.”

“When the socialism became more developed by us, even the smaller farmers began to be affected. I felt a great injustice and inequality for some people who wanted to live better life and gained their property by hard work, and suddenly the society threw them into such a state of being at the very end of all. My father gradually became a kulak even with his 5 – 6 hectares of land. Having so many children. The smaller farmers had to face unbearable requirements: hand in meat, hand in pork meat. Moreover, when the pig-slaughtering took place for the household, even the fat had to be handed in; the pork fat had to be detached from the skin. We actually ate bacon that never tasted close to bacon. And that´s just a small detail. Step by step I happened to be finding ideas, I would say, being anti-socialist.”