"His passion for work was so serious that when the communists came with the idea of forming a cooperative farm in Loděnice, he agreed and said: yes, I am not against it. And the communists said: well, okay, we'll take it, but they were people from Beroun, there will be a cooperative farm here, there will be our man as chairman, of course, but you will act here as an expert. That was agreed, but as soon as the local communists found out, they complained that it was absolutely out of the question, so the possibility of him working in the farm ended immediately. It's interesting just to add how the communists treated the cooperative farm. Within two years they completely stole everything from the farm. They stole live material, machines and so on, and finally the criminal police came and arrested the cooperative farm management."
"Sometime in the autumn of the year forty-six I was walking down the famous Oxford Street in London and stopped at a crossroads. There were cars coming from the side, one car stopped right in front of me, the driver opened the door and a typical elderly English lady, as they said, got out and walked straight towards me. Before I could do anything, she lifted my right hand with her free hand, she had a stick in the other, and kissed the back of it. I thought at that moment, ah, crazy woman. But she immediately explained and said to me: 'You see, young man', in English of course, 'it's true, my daughter was married to a Czechoslovak RAF pilot. He lost his life in the Battle of Britain and I have the utmost respect for the Czechoslovaks and I noticed that you have a Czechoslovak flag on your lapel and I want to pay my respects to you.'"
"I managed to slip out of the barracks and arrived in Prague. But the next morning the telephone rang and the German commander was on the other end, shouting at me that I had committed Fahnendflucht, or running away from the flag, and that I would be ctried at the military tribunal as a deserter. So that was not a good sign, because here was clearly the only punishment that a deserter would get. Nevertheless, I went back so as not to endanger the whole family. I was immediately captured and sent to a cell. My tie was taken away, my belt and shoelaces were taken away, as was commonly done with deserters, and I was instructed to march around the cell. March, only march, was the order. The next day at about noon the door was opened and someone threw my belongings into the cell and shouted at me, 'Weiter Dienen', or continue to serve. I didn't know what was going on, I got dressed, came to my unit and only a few hours later did I find out what had actually happened. Yes, something had happened. On the night of 13 March, the British, the RAF, made a heavy raid on Dresden, and that city was pretty much burned by napalm. The next day, the American bomber corps from Italy attacked Dresden again and bombed it with normal burst bombs. What does this matter have to do with me? A lot. That is, on the outskirts of Dresden my commander, the German commander, had a house, and the bomb hit the family house, and in that house the commander's wife and children died. The commander, when he found out, got an absolute shock, was unable to command and was even taken away."
Zdenek Bárta was born on 8 July 1927 in Planá nad Lužnicí, but he lived most of his life in Prague. He studied at the Smíchov Grammar School and graduated from the Faculty of Law in 1951. His grandfather Bohdan Bečka was Minister of Finance in the Švehla government from 1923 to 1925. At the end of the war, he escaped a German military court during forced labour in Pelhřimov. From 1946 to 1947 he studied in England at the Czechoslovak College and became the chairman of the student council. After his return to Bohemia, he was persecuted for his bourgeois origins and his family lost all their property. Together with his future wife Eva Prokešová, they were deployed in the 1950s to drill wells in Ejpovice as part of the Seventy Thousand to Production campaign. He then joined Strojexport, but was fired after denunciation. Subsequently, he was hired by Tesla Přemyšlení as a warehouseman, and after six years he was offered a job as a deputy director, which he refused. In the early 1970s he moved to the Czechoslovak Marketing Company. In 1970-74 he lectured at the University of 17 November, after its dissolution he moved to the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences, from where he was again fired upon further denunciation. He joined the Institute of State and Law, where he worked until the revolution. In 1983, State Security tried to get him to follow Professor Theodor Brenner from Lugano. He never collaborated with them and was never in the Communist Party. He retired in 1992 but remained active until 2015, when he lectured for the American University of the Third Age.
The father-in-law of the witness, farmer Vilém Prokeš (marked with an asterisk) with Eduard Beneš at an agricultural exhibition, Výstaviště, before World War II
The father-in-law of the witness, farmer Vilém Prokeš (marked with an asterisk) with Eduard Beneš at an agricultural exhibition, Výstaviště, before World War II
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
