“When they (communists) came to see my uncle and presented some nonsensical demands, he got mad and told them to go away. He said that bolshevism and communism would come to an end, just like the Jews in Russia have come to an end. He also said the commune will fall and that Lenin and Stalin didn’t do any good and that communism has no future, that it is the ultimate fraud. This exchange was the pretext for my uncle’s imprisonment. His first stop was in Dolní Královice.
“Mom carried us out of the burning house here close to the pond. She took our savings out of the cupboard where we kept it and placed it into a blanket that was used as a cover for the bed. She sat me down on blankets – including the blanket with the money – and told me to sit on it. That it’s all the money we have, she said. She also said that she will come back to get us if there is any danger. So my sister and I sat there, each of us on a pile of blankets, and a man from a textile processing works next door came over, lifted me up, took the blanket with the money and left.”
“Three days later the StB came back because he drained a section of his pond and harvested some of the fish. And I mean in his own pond because the pond was part of the property. They accused dad of causing damage to the official fishing authority. They took dad away and locked him up. First in Dolní Kralovice, then Jihlava, then Tábor and finally the uranium mine in Jáchymov.”
“Our dad was the Good Samaritan, he did what other millers would not do. He ground flour for people free of charge. My mom was often upset with him and told him that if someone informed on him he would be going to jail or facing the firing squad (the mill and its output was property of the state). He had a good heart and when people came pleading for food for their children he always gave them some flour. The only problem was that the word got around and since the train tracks were very close by our house – and the trains were very slow in those days – people jumped off the train to visit us. Sometimes even strangers, who heard about the good miller, came. I remember mom saying: ‘This is horrible, you can’t be doing this, not like this.’”
“This happened sometime in August 1952. Dad found couple of potato bugs and several larvae. It was noon, because noon is the best time to collect samples as the beetles climb to the accessible side of the plant leaves. The Colorado potato beetle was called the American bug at the time. Father took the bugs and the larvae, put them into a glass jar, placed it in the kitchen with the intent of bringing the samples to the national committee after work in the evening and moved on to other tasks. Soon after, plainclothes StB officers arrived and walked through our home. They found the jar with the bugs and got on dad’s case that he did not follow the official procedure about how to disinfect and document the find and that the potato harvest is in jeopardy.”
Věra Rolečková, nee Blažková, was born October 22, 1937 at the Mrkvička mill near Leština u Světlé. She went to primary school in the near by Sázavka (formerly Smrdov) and in 1949 she transferred to a school in Golčův Jeníkov. Her father Josef Blažek inherited a mill that he ran with his brother František. Local communist party officials persecuted the Blažek family after February 1948. Věra’s parents sent her to live with her cousin Jindřich Blažek so she would be able to study and avoid persecution. Her uncle František was arrested in 1950 and her father was sentenced for five years for poaching in 1952. Josef Blažek appealed and got a sentence reduction to two and a half years. In 1953, the family was (forcibly) relocated to a state-owned farm in Běchovice (near Prague) where they had to live until 1989. In the meantime, Věra Rolečková attended a secondary school in Prague where she graduated – in secret – in 1956. Later she attended Faculty of Hygiene (now a medical school), Charles University. After graduation, she was placed at the hospital in Sokolov. In 1966 she worked at the Nymburk hospital. From 1967 to 1989 she worked at various medical facilities outside of Prague. She often visited her family in Běchovice to help out on the state-owned farm. After November 1989, Věra and her sister Květulína took steps for the return of the family home and mill. They ended up having to buy it with compensation money received in the restitution proceedings. In 1991, their father Josef Blažek was rehabilitated by the District Court in Havlíčkův Brod after the public prosecutor re-opened the case of the persecuted miller. Věra Rolečková finally returned to her family home in 1998 where she unveiled memorial plaque for her father and in 2002 her family home saw another unveiling for her uncle František. At the time of this interview she lived at the Mrkvička mill near Leština u Světlé.
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