Josef Šmoldas

“At the time records were being set all over the country. And not just in the country but in the whole Socialist bloc. It came from Russia. The regime declared the duty to get in line, and so all plants had to break records. The way it worked was that some instructions came from up above, say from the government to the enterprise, and the enterprise reached out to the plants. The way it was [in our mine] was that the mine manager called a meeting, the men gathered up, and he said: ‘Look, chaps, there’s a way to earn some extra if we set a record. It’ll help the plant up top, and it’s an opportunity for you to earn some money.’ If he had asked just me, I wouldn’t have bothered. We earned a lot already, and there was no point in chasing along for a whole month just to get a thousand [crowns] more. But the men jumped at the offer.”

“The downhole drilling survey hit a deposit. A bit further on they found more of the same material, except the deposit just happened to head off in the direction of the first point, whereas they thought that was the size of the lode. So they went through the middle, but the edges were poorer because each lode has a different level of content. Some of them had lots of percent of copper, others only had zero point zero one four. That was at the very limits of possible extraction. But we didn’t have anywhere to import it from, and copper was a strategic resource. The industry needed it. So there was no other choice but to mine what we had.”

“I was entranced when I saw the old Greek women all in black, sitting on the doorsteps. Each held a spindle, and they kept spinning wool. I was fascinated by it. The men just sat there counting a thread of beads with their fingers. Everyone grew vegetables, and they were enclosed kind of community. It changed when their children came to Zlaté Hory. The young Greeks had been through the refugee camps, where they’d learnt good Czech. So they integrated immediately. I had ten Greek classmates at school, and they were nice boys and girls.”