Miroslava Holubová

„I will never forget, it must have been in 1953 or 1952, when my father was imprisoned and we lived in Most, so on Saint Nicholas Day we easily had 15 Nicholases coming to us. People were afraid of us, of course, they crossed the street when our mother passed by with us. But when they wore masks and they were dressed as Nicholases, they came to us. We really had so many Nicholases who brought us various goodies, and I didn't see it as something weird, it was normal for me and it was normal for our father.“

„The authorities arrived looking for my father, so my mother went to the Slánskýs the next day, talked to Slánský's wife, and when she returned, she told my grandfather that it was terribly strange, because as they sat together at a table like this, soldiers stood behind them and aimed at them with submachine guns. So she came home with the notion that it was all weird, and then she was no longer surprised about anything. A house search took place at our house, which was very thorough. They also pulled little Ládek out of the crib and dismantled it fully to see if there were any weapons. My mother just said that she would at least know where my father was, since he had a tendency to just leave someplace for three days straight without my mother ever seeing him.“

„They got to the area of ​​Brdy, which was a German training camp, and they got to Mníšek pod Brdy. There was solitude, Lucký mill, and that’s where the miller Vašíček lived. When they asked him for food, he told them to take what they wanted. My father objected that there were no thugs, that they asked him for help as members of the Czechoslovak army. So he went, and since they had freshly slaughtered animals, he brought everything he had to offer. My father said that their colonel Melnikov was wounded, so he asked whether they had any fruit. So they brought the fruit. And Mr. Vašíček asked how he could know they were not fraudsters. My father told him that it was simple, that they would leave in the morning through here and that Mr. Vašíček should then go to the gendarmerie station and report that they had gone that way. So they said goodbye, my father saying that when the war was over, he would come the next day. And indeed, when the war ended, a car arrived and our father stepped out of it. To this day, we consider the Vašíčeks our family and they always have been. When my father was locked up and only our mother worked for us, she fed us and even fed our grandmother and grandfather. They did not have a pension because they had to leave their farm, so the Vašíčeks always came, brought butter, lard, meat, fruit and we spent the holidays there, their youngest daughter was as old as me, and when she finished high school, she came to visit us in Teplice, stayed in my room, even got married there, married one of our young friends. And for years we kept the tradition of having Christmas carp from the Vašíčeks from their nursery in their yard alive. And it stretches to this day. My children go to Mníšek the same way we went there.“