Přemysl Hořejší

"I served in the army in Ostrava with the anti-aircraft gunners. There we were on a firing mission in Kežmarok, outside Kežmarok, and one day a police car came. And they came and asked for the name Hořejší. So they brought them to me, and I said, 'Yes.' - 'Come with us,' and I was immediately handcuffed. I said, 'Why handcuffs? I didn't do anything, I'll go with you.' They didn't talk to me. It was all about horses, because I was working in the Netolice stables and I was driving horses and going to horse races and things like that, we were buying and selling horses, there had to be an escort. And they started questioning me, saying that there were terrible things going on there, that there was grain dealing, horse dealing and things like that. But the interrogations were terrible, I don't like to remember. Because I couldn't tell them anything, we did nothing illegal. But I can tell you that the interrogations were always repeated after two hours. I was sitting at the table alone and there were six people around, and they kept asking, repeating questions. And if I didn't answer right away, they would hit me. Quite often I ended up on the floor being kicked, that's just how people were treated there. It was unpleasant and I don't like to talk about it. But unfortunately it was an experience I will never forget. For those two hours they always put me in one room where I was alone, where there was nothing. Except for a bucket – as a toilet, but there was nothing else. That's when you stop being human."

"I served in Netolice at the stud farm Schwarzenberg. It was a farm and there used to be a game-preserve around the farm, but the game-preserve has been closed after the Rožmberks left Kratochvíle. But they left a hunting ground where mainly members of the ministries and so on used to go. One day Mr Čepička, an army general, he was no longer an army general at that time, but he was in the Foreign Ministry. And he had a permission to shoot deer there... Well, they came, there was a stud farm, where there were foals and mares. They came accompanied by a gamekeeper, asking if they shot a deer, would we help them transport it. That's what we did, we had to help out, so we did. In the afternoon he shot the deer, so we unloaded it and they invited me to sit in the lodge. When I got there, the lodge was closed, the blinds were down, no lights, so I knocked on the door and they came to open it for me. It was the gamekeeper who opened the door so I asked him what happened. He replied, 'Don't ask, it's real bad, but come on in!' So I went in and there was Mr. Čepička and his wife, who was already quite drunk, and she started telling a story about her father, Mr. Gottwald, and what they pumped into him in Russia and that they had killed him. Him, who did so much for them... I was just amazed that she was even calling the Soviets names like Soviet bastards, when her father was such a servant of the Soviets."

"So I went out there tonight. The lodge was locked up, I was thinking: Well, what's going on here? So I got knocked on the door, the gamekeeper came out and I said, "What is it, what's going on here? You always had everything for all of us. "He says," Man, do not ask, you will see. "Well, I came there. And his wife, she was actually Gottwald's daughter, was very drunk, but what I heard there was swearing about the Russians, the Soviets, from Stalin, he [Gottwald] died three weeks after Stalin. There she cried out: Syphilis was injected to him ... Gottwald died of the syphilis. 'Man, I had to plank it all, if someone went and heard me,' because it was still during the deep communism, and they thought there are some imperialists here.' He must have been a communist, had to be checked, otherwise he could not hold his job. It was terrible. Well, but then I talked to him [general Čepička] , and I said: ´Look, but if you have such opinions, why is that as I know you come from a good family of lawyers in Prague.´ He said: Well, with my father-in-law I got to Moscow, but you could not say no. As you stood up against something, the next day you were already shit. There was no playing around during the rule of Stalin."

"Then came the year 1968 and the checkups, so they banned me to teach and work with the youth, so I did some time at district waterworks and sewers, just plain digging and stuff like that. Well, then I started working in a farm cooperative here in Třebonín and there I was a zoo technician. There they changed the chairman, who had some comments against it, so again I was looking for another job. Not in education, I did not even think about it, but because I was unemployed for two months, and that was not acceptable, so then the lady at the labour office, where I went every week ... That was dangerous, it was an offense at the time, nobody could have been unemployed. So I went there and she told me, look, there is a telephone school in Rožmberk, ask there. They always look for someone to work there, and you've taught before. They did not know my story, so I went there and he said: Ok, but I told the director about your history, and he said, "If you do not agitate here, you can get the job, because our school is managed by Prague, it does not belong to the district."

"They took state estates. My father had been there for about a year as a keeper, and then an accident, he stuck a nail in his shoulder and got skin cancer, they kicked him out and we had to move out... The tough thing about it was that when he came back from the hospital, he went to the radiation treatment, so he still got accused that supplies limits have not been met. And when he came back from the hospital, a member of the state police was waiting here for him and exported him directly to prison."