Jaroslav Hamberger

"I got that [notice] saying I was supposed to come to school on the very first day of the holidays. I had already suspected something. In the morning, my former colleague, a teacher who had become an inspector, came with me on the bus from Sušice. We chatted; we were on first-name terms. Then we walked from the bus stop about half a kilometer to the school; the bus stop is in Nová Dlouhá Ves and there is Stará Dlouhá Ves. We got there. She told me to wait in the staff room. She went to the headmaster. Then the headmaster came for me and said, come with me. I went in and that's where I found out. 'Comrade Hamberger, because of your anti-socialist views and your anti-fraternal aid stance, we can't have you as a teacher in these services.' That's how I got fired."

"My mother's brother's farm was secluded, and they were obligated to turn in larger supplies of some [crops] - grain, potatoes - than the cooperative, which was in the village, about two kilometers away. He went to prison for allegedly failing to meet the supplies. There were these propaganda signs with 'Kulaks are robbing the Czech people by not delivering to them' written on them, with drawings of fat kulaks. The aunt had a little girl, six months old. She got up, took the keys, came to the dirstrict authority in Prachatice, and told them: 'Here, these are the keys. There are barns, animals, cows, two horses and a foal, and chickens, poultry. Take care of it. I won't stay there alone with a young child. I'm going back to my parents.' And uncle was back home in two days.