Ladislav Jirák

"Out of compulsion, [my father] had his first heart attack when he was fifty-one years old. He turned to a local doctor in Choltice to give him some medicine. He prescribed some medicine and told him to take it at night. I actually witnessed this first hand when my dad started screaming terribly. Dad took it for the night and then, as he described it, he said it was tearing around his heart - terrible pain, flying around the house, hitting his chest and screaming like that. In the morning he went to the hospital in Pardubice, there was a specialist there, Dr Pravdová - then he and the doctor were friends, she sometimes came to our house. I knew her personally, maybe she is still alive. When he showed her the medicine he had received for his heart, he said: 'For God's sake, Mr. Jirák, how could you have survived? I wouldn't say it was an accident, that the doctor was wrong. I think they had the doctor caught, too, to get rid of the rebel in a subtle way. They took advantage of the fact that he was having a heart attack. I believe that's the way it was."

"The prettiest horses in the village, beautiful, so fast, lighter. It was his pride. I can see it as if now before my eyes, that a carriage with Russian officers is coming from the Choltice railway station along the road. They stopped by a field. Of course they noticed the beautiful horses. When dad approached the gate, they had their angry bitches out, such heavy horses, and they said, 'Give me a ruffle!' So dad, with tears in his eyes, had to unhitch the horses and they hitched them up in the buggy, took the whip and rode away."