Josef Merhaut

"Even my father got into problems with them. He was forbidden to perform music at parties. He played for thirty years at various parties and weddings. Then an official came, I was a little boy, he had high black boots and a ruler that he kept slapping. They threatened my father to destroy him unless he joined the cooperative and became a Communist party member. They pushed him hard, they didn't let him perform music for a while. Then they wouldn't let him buy wood for the winter time. Eventually they succeeded and he signed up. And they let him be. He was still hating them, blaming them. But they didn't push him into anything anymore."

"My wife says it was worse for her when she was in school. It was bad for me, but it was even worse for her, she's seven years younger. There was a Holy Mass for her father who died too young - when she was about fourteen years old. She was walking through the gardens to the church and a neighbour lady saw her and told on her. There were some teachers staying at her place. The next day, the teacher whipped her, beat her with a stick for going to church. And in the meantime, her appendix burst. She went to the hospital. It was not caused by her teacher beating her, it was just coincidence. But when she got to the hospital for surgery, the doctors saw that she was beaten up. They asked her who did it to her. She didn't want to say because she was too scared. Finally she said it was her teacher."