Josef Krejník

"That was when I first started to realize the difference in how offenders were perceived. People who weren’t considered reliable by the regime—just because they owned some property—began to be viewed with suspicion. It could have been an ordinary craftsman who had a small shop, but even that made him someone not fully aligned with the working class. That started to seem a bit strange to me. I thought, even back when people lived in tribes, not everyone walked around wearing just a fig leaf. Some were more skilled, so they had a leopard skin. So here, if someone did something better, they weren’t just a worker anymore—they started their own business and employed others. That was simply because they were more capable, which didn’t mean they were insignificant to society. That’s when I began to see things differently."

"Dad was a very committed communist. He almost paid for it once. I know this from my mother, who told me. Somewhere in a village near Bochov, he persuaded farmers to join a cooperative. It was at a time when there was a rumor that there was going to be a currency reform. In the plenum, the question was whether and when it would happen. Dad, as a representative of the district party committee, told them not to worry, that this was imperialist bullshit, that Comrade Zápotockž´ý had said that there would be no currency reform. The meeting dragged on, so Dad didn't go home, he said he would spend the night there. In the morning they woke up and there was monetary reform. People were driving them with pitchforks, he was glad he ran away."