František Vyšata

"In all companies and all schools and all research institutes, there had to be a compulsory cadre function that looked up what your grandmother did, what your grandfather did, what assets you had. Being a cultural organizer all my life, it also saved me during the totalitarian era. At one workplace, the recruiter came to me and said: Mr Vyšata, please, our company has 400 employees and you are probably the last ten who are not in the Communist Party. And I have orders to fire you. I want to help you because you're from our street. Think of something to do so I can report you to the company director for being involved in socialism. So I don't have to fire you. So the ROH was here and all the employees in the company, in the JZD, in the school had to be in the ROH. We had these little books, you had to pay fifteen crowns and you got fifteen crowns for having paid. And it had a committee, the ROH as it was called, out of those several hundred employees, there were always ten, it was called the Plant Committee of the ROH. So I said what if I was the cultural officer of the ROH plant committee. And she says: That would be wonderful, I won't have to fire you."