Vladimír Kolář

„The local people didn’t want to join the Cooperative, as it was chaired by a certain communist who was holding the whole village by the scruff of the neck. He would go to Týn nad Vltavou to the district committee every day and try and creep into the communist big shots’ favour. They were holding the district by the scruff of its neck in their turn. Nevertheless, the big shots were fully aware that he was a bootlicker. He was prepared to grass every single one of them up and so they didn’t want him among themselves. And so, in order to show what a good communist he was, he created a lot of pressure for the Cooperative in Temelínec to come into being and run properly. The levies they were asking were so high, people couldn’t meet it. My parents were fined for not submitting the required milk. It was either pay a fine of 10.000 crowns or go to prison for ten days. My father would have preferred to do his time in prison, but they put pressure on him to join the Cooperative, in which case they would let him off the fine. My parents didn’t want to join as the Cooperative wanted people who had had no land. They wanted more land to be worked but didn’t want to work on it. ,Why should we? We’d given you no field, and you want us to work on yours? No way!’ So, my parents worked in the cowhouse or the pigsty. Later, my mum was in charge of the hennery. My father had to pay the fine, though. They put it in instalments for him.”

“This granddad. my father-in-law, he was also in this Šumava II group. And my father-in-law said: I walked my district, and I didn’t just deliver post, I also collected the mailboxes. So I’d bring it home and sort it out. And when there was a letter addressed to the police in Týn, for instance, I put it aside. It needed to be carefully unglued to see what was in it, and then to somehow contact the person who was named within, say, that he was hiding corn or that some stranger had stayed in his house for the night. But because no one could send it as registered mail because they couldn’t walk into the post office and say, look here, one registered letter, and it would have the address of the police headquarters in Týn nad Vltavou – no one would take in on themselves to send a letter like that because everyone would know they were a snitch. Those were anonymous reports, so we investigated into who might have written it, then searched for information, then the person who was informed on was contacted, and he’d give some tips as to who the snitch might be.”

“In Strakonice I did really want to do some school there, so I applied to an evening technical course. Here [in Týn nad Vltavou] they were opening up the first year of a technical school, and I applied as well, but they didn’t even invite me to the entrance exams. I found out that the exams were to take place. So I went to the carer and told him, comrade, I’d like to go to the exam, but why can’t I go, why are the others going and not me? And he blushed and was embarrassed and didn’t know what to say to me; I was more embarrassed than he was, so I gave him a hint, I said, there was no room left, was there, comrade. And he said, yes, yes, there was no room left, there was no room for you.”