"I even remember how the Secret Security came, and they came, I don't know how to say it, to visit or look. I don't know what they were looking for. Because my mother came from seven children, there was no dowry, nothing like that. And regarding the gold there were only three necklaces since my baptism. I got them from the godparents, and otherwise my parents just had wedding rings, maybe even engagement rings, but they were looking in the closets, I remember. And my younger brother, he was over a year old, just when they were there, he fell off the couch because my mother took care of them. So, then she probably didn't care what was going on there, and she went to take care of the baby... But it wasn't nice, it really wasn't nice. And my mother had lifelong trauma. When a stranger appeared in the yard, she already thought it was a secret security and that something was going on. It was scared all her life until her death." - "And how did you perceive it, this visit here, how was it explained to you?" - "I perceived it terribly. I thought ... I had a friend from the neighbors over, and I remember telling her, 'They're going to steal something from us.' I remember then, even though my father came from the field, he was called to the office, they were probably already there, I don't know this, but I know that he went there and never came back."
"Awfully! So that was a first big shock! And when I found out that everything is not like as it is, as they say, how they teach us at school, that something is already going on with a person and that something like ... Because there were about three of us who had such school results, and none of us got to that school. And a girl who had five Cs got there. And she was the only one who got there. Then another girl got there on appeal, but otherwise it was really terrible at the time. When my brother was finishing school, it wasn't so bad anymore. But I was finishing school in 1962, about 1962, so it was really awful. Well, there was no way to go anywhere. Well, then, our mother went to the district committee in various ways, and so she said, 'Then I'll divorce him if that bothers you that much! If the children suffer for it like that! ‘Well - nothing but studying the gardening.”
"It was terrible when they loaded it all there. Everything that was left." - "Tell me, what was that for?" - "Well, he was declared a kulak and had to leave the village in which he lived, he lost everything. He lost not only the fields, he lost all animals, he lost everything, he lost his housing, everything that was, the machines, he lost everything. And finally, now that I had the opportunity to look into files after the rehabilitation, there was a list, saying: 'Green sweater, such a number of socks and so on.' So, everything... Actually, my parents came with nothing. (4s break) It was really… A man cannot really… We did not have any… that we would have some beautiful house or something, no… We had a barn built and the house was yet to be repaired, but still it was nice there. And then we went to the farm, where the people who lived there before, also the landowners, were also moved out. Everything there was old. High ceilings, cold rooms. We came there as children, we did not like it, so my little brother who was 2,5 years old at that time, he said in the evening, 'Dad, take Smudla and we're going home.' Smudla was our dog. And I didn't like it there. I remember we went, the Aunt Schmoranz, my brother was sitting on her lap, we were sitting in the tractor, and when we were leaving there, everyone was crying. We were crying, we didn't even know why, but that the adults were crying, so the children were crying too."
Jarmila Harsová, née Karlíková, was born on June 11, 1947. She grew up on a farm in Slatiňany, where her parents farmed. In 1951, at the time of violent collectivization, the State Security summoned her father František Karlík for an interrogation after a house search. He never returned from that interrogation. He was sentenced to several years in a fabricated trial. He was imprisoned briefly in Jáchymov and then transferred to work in Prachovice. He was released on amnesty in 1953. However, after her father returned from prison, the family was forcibly evicted from Slatiňany to the nearby village Honbice, where so-called kulaks were sent not only from the surrounding area, but also from all over the country. Jarmila, who had excellent school results at the primary school, was not allowed to enter the secondary grammar school. She trained as a gardener in Želešice and later graduated from the secondary gardening school in Mělník. Jarmila got married in Pilsen, where she spent the 1970s, then she got divorced and returned to her parents, who had lived in Podhůra u Slatiňan since 1965. Jarmila worked in plant nurseries, in purchasing and as a telephone handler at a health center. After 1989, the Karlík family property that was confiscated by the Communists was returned to the them and the father underwent judicial rehabilitation. She died on September 8, 2021.
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!
