"The trial took place in 1950 in Přerov. There was a theatre called Komuna, which was demolished. There was an orchestra hall, a stage, so the trial took place there. There were people invited there, selected to chant 'Death to the kulaks' and so on, because it was a designated group. Which they didn't quite manage to do. Dad got three and a half years, Mum should have got ten years. Except: the court went for advice and they sent the ones on trial to the orchestra pit to be guarded by guards, which was not supposed to happen. There was a piano or an upright piano, I don't know. My mother, when she saw that, she was delighted - it wasn't closed - she sat down at that piano and started playing 'Why shouldn't we be delighted'. Nothing at first, then somebody figured out what it was, so they punished her by giving her five more years."
"That farm. Because we've been without our parents for a while, a few months. My grandfather, that was in September, so he was still finishing up the farm year. And as soon as the beets were done and all the work, they came in, took all the cattle, just took all the hay, straw, we don't know where. And they turned it into a State Farm warehouse. There was an appointed manager. He was a young man who had graduated from the College of Agriculture. The electricity wasn't on anymore, it was just switched off. We were sitting at home, waiting to see what would happen. Suddenly someone knocked and the manager came in. He was very apologetic that he was the caretaker there, but that he had finished the Agricultural College and that they had appointed him there. That he came from farming and that he was terribly unhappy about the way they had sealed up our pantries, cellars, everything that was not allowed. So he went and he tore the seals off and he said, 'Pick up the things you need, I'll seal it up later.' So he helped us tremendously like that. He was still saying that he liked to color photographs, he even colored one of mine. Then he left. We had to move out of that ground floor upstairs, all of us, because the caretakers came and there were state farm dumps there. It was like that for about a year. After a year, the administrators suddenly moved out quickly and the army took over the farm. They turned it into a barracks, there were artillerymen there, because there were two yards paved, shelters for farm equipment, for straw, etc. So the artillerymen piled in, ransacked the farm in a terrible way, destroyed it, then abandoned it. The JZD moved in, it burned down after a while, so a bulldozer came and razed it to the ground. So there was nothing left of it."
"Everything was fine until September 1, 1949, when I started school and my parents took me to school as an only child, saying that my grandmother, a widow, would pick me up. Well, she picked me up, I came home, my dad and mom were gone. Dad went to the field, he went to plough with the tractor and it happened that some Tatraplan came, gentlemen in long coats got out, took him off the tractor, handcuffed him and took him away. It was midday and my mother was taking his lunch to the fields on her bicycle so that he wouldn't waste time. She saw all this, so she hid somewhere, came home and they were looking for my mother, saying they were going to arrest her. But my grandfather hid her somewhere, I don't know where, for about 14 days. There were night searches, night searches of the farmhouse. Mum couldn't stand it mentally, so she went by herself. She turned herself in and was arrested."
Ing. František Ludík was born on March 4, 1943 in Přerov into a family connected for generations with land, domestic animals and farming on the farm built by his grandfather František Ludík, a Czechoslovak legionnaire. Both of his sons graduated from the University of Agriculture in Brno and devoted themselves to the improvement of the family property. His happy childhood ended on September 1, 1949, when he returned home from his first day at school to find that his father František, and later his mother Ludmila, had been arrested. Father was sentenced to three and a half years, mother to ten years, and in the meantime the farm was completely destroyed and razed to the ground. After finishing primary school, František had to decide whether he would become a bricklayer or a tile-layer. Although he was an excellent student, local officials refused to allow him to continue his studies. After many problems, the family managed, thanks to friends, to get him admitted to the eleven-year school in Ústí nad Orlicí. After graduation, he was again denied permission for further studies. He had to go through many jobs, from manual to technical and clerical to managerial positions, before he managed to graduate from the University of Transport by distance learning. His wife, Vera, was not allowed to study for the same reason (her father was a tradesman), but she has been writing all her life, whether poetry or various shorter texts. František Ludík retired in 2005, at the time of filming in 2024 he was living in Prague, his wife was still artistically active.
Baptism of grandson Marek (from left: daughter Věrka, mother Ludmila, mother-in-law Věra and mother-in-law with grandson Marek; sitting: son-in-law Petr, granddaughter Barborka, František Ludík and daughter Lenka), Náchod, 2003
Baptism of grandson Marek (from left: daughter Věrka, mother Ludmila, mother-in-law Věra and mother-in-law with grandson Marek; sitting: son-in-law Petr, granddaughter Barborka, František Ludík and daughter Lenka), Náchod, 2003
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