František Čuban

"He put everything in there, of course, and had to start working for the State farm. Then, he was driving there with his tractor, they let him. My father wasn't very happy, he was cursing all the time, but he was smiling, and it annoyed them a lot. He went through the whole Kosmonosy and he smiled at all the communists, at that Lipenský, Baloun, Buben, they called him the Grey Wolf, who was such an asshole. I think that was why they came after us like that and kept pushing us into a corner. But they didn't break my father."

"Suddenly, the director called me again, the ranger just arranged it, and the director says: 'We can't keep you employed, Mr. Lipenský doesn't want it.' He wants you to go to the State farm. They learned this from a State Security officer who was spying on me, and I said to myself several times, 'Hergot!' Someone always followed me as I walked from Kosmonosy to Debr to get on a train. I was going to get the train on Mondays, I was always coming back on Saturday, I was going home on the weekends. So, they tracked me down, they fired me, but I didn't give up."

“When I was a child, I did not perceive the pressure as I do now. There was a lot of pressure, but I thought that it was normal. Now I see that not everything was all right back then.”

“We had a little field behind the house where we grew everything we needed. We had hens, rabbits, and a cow, and we thus had milk from the cow, and we made butter, curd cheese, and all milk products at home. We had hens in the yard, and a pig…”

“…I had about twenty-thousand kilometres of experience as a driver, and I have passed some psychological testing. Meanwhile they were arranging my passport; I had to have about fifty passport-size photographs made for visas to all European countries… When all this was completed, there was a phone call from the manager who told me that he did not wish me to work as an international truck driver. When I came to work the following Monday, I got issued an old truck and I had to work as a driver only within Czechoslovakia.”

“My parents could not do anything about it. It was an absolute power. Whatever would my parents do, it would get greatly exaggerated... I was in the fifth grade of elementary school and it was in 1950.”