"Whoever had something in the village and had to collectivise it, it was bad. Those who didn't have it were better off, and then they controlled it. That was not good, it wasn't. That's why it broke down that people didn't have a relationship, how they had their property. I have a friend who...as old as me almost, so she got her property back, so I know she's the only one who manages her property. I mean, again, she's the kind of person that drives a tractor and she plough everything and does it herself, but the people that have it, like rented or whatever, they don't have a relationship with the land anymore. They just want to make money as much as possible. And I think even the land now, I look at it now when I walk, I look at it now when I walk around, that the land is terribly devastated and they're not putting in what it used to be."
"My dad, they were worse off. They lived in Moravia in Tovačov and my grandfather was a big farmer, he had a lot of land and everything. Well, yeah, but in those days, like, people were so fanatical or they were glad that something was or I don't know what it was. It just ended up that they took everything away from them. They loaded them on a wagon at night, put what they needed and took them here to Bohemia, so they had nothing. I don't know if they were still being watched, I don't know, but here in Nebrenice they were feeding the pigs, my grandmother and my grandfather. And then my dad and his brother worked on the state farm here in Přebor near Velke Popovice."
"They came to me when I was going to school, because I was doing my final exams in the evening, so I needed time off work. So I was going to work from six in the morning and at two-thirty three times a week I was still going to school until nine. And because I needed a study leave, they suggested I go. Well, I have a husband who said that if I went to the Communist Party he would divorce me. I said that, and that was that. I didn't have to."
Jiřina Chaloupková was born on 20 March 1954 in Modletice, where her grandparents had a farm. Their farm was confiscated as part of collectivization and they had to work in the local unified agricultural cooperative (JZD). The farm was also confiscated from the other grandparents in Tovačov, who were also evicted far from home, where they fed pigs in the cooperative. Jiřina Chaloupková worked all her life as an accountant and refused to join the Communist Party. The land was returned to her family in restitution. In 2024 she lived in Prague.
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!
