"And the farmhouse was also home for you?" - "Of course." - "How was it? Were you allowed to stay there?" - "Therefore, as soon as we got our notice, they started to evict us immediately. And the comrades wondered where. They found out that an old sheepfold belonged to the Křížovnický dvor, only sheds, a clay ground, no windows, no light, as if only for machines. As it would be the best place for the Růžičkas to live, they would move us there, but in the meantime, dad has made arrangements with Mr. Brejcha. It was a farmer from nearby Holyně, he offered him two rooms, he used them as a granary, that it would still be better than the sheepfold. Then, also, that we have to wait before moving, that a committee will come to find out what from our furniture we can take with us. But there were five farmers in Holyně, they got together, took flatbed trucks and carts. It was two kilometers or a kilometer, so they moved us during the day. And there we were for ten years.'
"Then the threshing started, and suddenly on Sunday morning or after lunch, a guy as big as a mountain, with hands like shovels, appeared in the doorway. And he said: 'I'm Modřanský from Chuchle and I heard that the communists want to take it away from you and that you're evangelicals, so I'm going to help you. I don't want anything for it, just an apartment and food.' Well, money was still a thing at the time, so he got paid. He also saved it back then.'
"The national committee already existed, so it determined that when the liberation army came, it was our duty to contribute to their food. Before this decision began, when they arrived, they rushed into the cowbarn, shot two or three pigs, loaded them onto carts and drove away. Then we had to give them, we said, his name was Red, an ox. It was such a mastodon ox, the largest and oldest. He harnessed all the oxen, so he was raised only to bring carts to the threshing machine. He knew where to stop over the years like clockwork. When it came up again that we had to give something as a thank you to the Red Army, the secretary of the national committee came to the barn, to the stable, I think her name was Urbanová. And she saw a huge fat mastodon there, and especially a red one. It was, so she said, 'Here it is.' So they shot it and loaded it. They were looking forward to a soft goulash, but they probably had to chop it with axes."
Jiří Růžička was born on July 26, 1929 into a family of farmers. His father Václav came from a house in Kluk u Poděbrad and rented a large farm estate in Slivenec, which later became a part of Prague. His mother was from Křečhoř u Kolína. They met after the First World War, in which his father was wounded. Jiří Růžička had a brother who was five years older and a sister who was a year older. During the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Germany on March 15, 1939, he experienced how the occupiers distributed their national dish ‚eintopf‘ to the Czech people from large cauldrons. The large estate belonged to a Jewish owner, who ended up in a concentration camp, but survived. However, his wife and two sons died. After the liberation of the republic by the Soviet Union in May 1945, a military politruk stayed with the Růžičkas and told witness´s father that there were no farmers and bourgeois in the Soviet Union and that they would not be in Czechoslovakia either. In 1945, the manor farm estate came under national administration, and the Růžičkas continued to rent it. After the communist coup in 1948, the Růžičkas continued to farm the estate, but they were not allowed to have any employees. After the nationalization of the estate in the fall of 1949, Václav Růžička and his son became employees, they were fired at the end of 1950. Jiří Růžička enlisted in the army at the beginning of the 1950s and, as the politically unreliable son of a kulak, served for three years with the Auxiliary Engineering Corps in the Svatá Dobrotivá labor camp. After a year of returning from the military service, he found it difficult to find work, despite his high school diploma, he made a living as a manual worker and was persecuted by the communist regime. After 1989, he worked as a director of the Center for Folk Art Production. He died on March 26, 2022.
Hrdinové 20. století odcházejí. Nesmíme zapomenout. Dokumentujeme a vyprávíme jejich příběhy. Záleží vám na odkazu minulých generací, na občanských postojích, demokracii a vzdělávání? Pomozte nám!
