"There were rumours that monetary reform was on the way. That of course there is no threat, no threat, no threat of monetary reform. And Zápotocký said the other night that nothing was going to happen, that there would be no monetary reform. And on the third we woke up and there was no money. There was no money! It stayed in my memory because on the sixth I had a wedding. Everybody was looking at the ratio and what was going to happen. It was terrible! It was such a lie! But such a perfect lie! We had saved up from the wages we had, we had about forty thousand to buy the essentials. And that was it! And to this day I know we didn't pay the committee, not the parish priest, not the photographer. Only after that we settled it, we couldn't do it in three days, not at all. This is my memory of Antonín Zápotocký."
Those who had so-called "grunty" (farms) passed down from generation to generation had it really bad. Because they didn’t want to give them up. We received an order – we had to mark the accounts of each farmer with red circles – these were the so-called kulaks, so we would know who was who. There were quite a lot of them here, many wealthy farmers. In the villages, really, there were a lot of them. There was only one farmer in the entire district – Karel Lískovec. Of course, he passed away long ago, only his son remained. And I used to go to his son to get grain when I had chickens. His father never joined the JZD (collective farm) and survived. The only farmer in the whole district. It was incomprehensible to everyone. Otherwise, gradually, there were JZDs everywhere. And in the end, people were quite happy, you know why? Because they worked fixed hours, from – to, and this persuasion method worked. They weren’t as tied down; they went to work like in a regular job. Later, state farms were established, but that took years, you know…
"They got in, they picked them out of the factories, the most reliable ones. And at that time seven organizational workers joined us. They were assigned a motorcycle, each had a gun. Anyway, they had a pistol, we know that, everybody knew that. And they prepared the socialization of the village. They went out and convinced them. And they had pretty tough persuasion methods. Too much! They were increasing their contingents and they knew they couldn't deliver. And then what? And by doing that, they just forced them, because they were increasing their supplies, to turn in what they were told to turn in. That was x number of products. It didn't matter what they were supposed to turn in. That was terrible!"
Gerta Smoláková, née Baierová, was born in 1930 in Chomutov into a mixed marriage. Father Josef Baier was German, mother Vlasta Baierová was Czech. During the war, her father was drafted to work at the Junkers arms factory in Germany. He came home once every three months. After the war he never returned, but started a new family in Germany. The witness and her mother were allowed to stay in Czech. Gerta Smoláková could not finish high school - for girls from mixed families there was a course for women‘s professions in Kadaň. After graduation, she went to work as a nurse in a children‘s hospital in Vrchlabí, and later became an accountant at the Economic Cooperative in Chomutov. There she witnessed the practice of coercion against farmers during the collectivisation of agriculture. In 1953 she married Vladimír Samolák. In 1969, she and her husband considered emigrating and visited West Germany by invitation. She worked as an accountant on the same farm throughout her life. In 2024 she lived in the family home in Chomutov. The memories of the witness were recorded with the support of the Chomutov in Memories of Witnesses project.
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!
