Blažena Froncová

“I went there in 1955 – that was the worst time ever. When a farmer refused to hand in the demanded produce (rye, wheat or eggs) he was put before the court. The chairman of the Senate Dr. Přibil told me during the trial: ‘Blaničko, we can’t decide this. We’ll take a short break, I have to go to the little house for instructions’. The ‘little house’ was the Communist party secretariat next to the bus station. The rulings on the cases were done according to paragraph X, article A B C, article 3, etc. If the case was of an agricultural nature, it was according to a specific paragraph, but the sub-paragraph – meaning eviction, confiscation and I don’t know what else – was determined by the local Communist party here at the secretariat. So when the Communists gave the instruction to pass such and such a verdict, the judges ruled accordingly.”

“There was also a certain Mr. Panocha living there – a sort of a character from Jičín. He was a candy maker and made so-called ‘certle’. It was a sort of a glass candy – it smelled a bit of anise. He would sell them at the annual fair. He was a sort of a weird guy. He had a beard. Then he became the guard of the local gate. At noon and at nine o’clock in the evening, he would blow his trumpet so that the people knew what time it was.”

“One day, I came into my office and found an application for membership in the Communist party on my desk. The chairman’s signature was already there – the application had to be signed by two attestants or two recommending persons and one more person. The chairman told me to sign it and not to worry about it. My daddy, who had been a national socialist, later told me that I was supposed to sign it. He said that I would have been better off if I had put my signature to it. He said that I would have been allowed to keep my job and would have made a glamorous career at the district council. I wrote to my schoolmate, Bedřiška: ‘Bédo, just imagine this, I had an application to the Communist party in my drawer. There’s no way I’m joining them. I ran away from the council to Čeřovka to sulk. I’m not going back there anymore. I’ll not sign it’. By coincidence – later on, I was much more cautious when writing something – that letter in which I openly threw dirt at the Communist party, was intercepted by the police. Her brother was a pilot and they were just about to flee to Germany. He had an airplane in Cheb and everything had already been set up. The police was checking their mail and intercepted this letter from me to my friend in which I wrote that I hated the Communists and that I would never join the party. The police then informed the district authorities about it and I was in trouble again. You can imagine that being a secretary of a Communist chairman, it was very inapt from me to write things like that.”