"It turned out that restitution was granted. Basically, it's also a business... I don't know how many millions they estimated at the time. But the other side, again, claimed it had no value, that it was about to be lost. And it was still there unchanged, even the Russian red flag from May Day was stuck in a pot and nothing was happening. ... We still had something to prove. So I did it, and then the screwdrivers came. We knew each other from when we were young. All that was going on, and then the office. Then, out of the few million, that this wasn't there anymore... Everything wasn't there anymore. We had our sawmill there, everything was set up for woodworking, it was all gone. Even the things that we might have had in the backyard were gone, not even the swing set or all of my father's patents, that was expired. Nothing..." - "There was a screw factory then?" - "First a national administrator came there." - "Did they destroy the factory right away?" - "They closed it down, this disappeared, that disappeared, I don't know where it came from. A modern sawmill like that, caters, planer suction. Everything was set up so you could push a button and keep going. Everything disappeared instantly, including the two dogs that they offered us to take. We said we had to live somewhere first, and the next day the dogs weren't there, I don't even want to imagine what it was like. ... Then there was the merry-go-round again, going somewhere to sign something, you're not entitled again, another miscalculation, that it was going to be demolished, that it would fall down anyway. The original estimate was reduced to less than half. They gave us some, but I got it in coupons. There was some face value, but it wasn't saleable. I sold some in the first wave, gave each of the kids a third and kept a third and put it in the house."
"My father was an apprentice locksmith, and as it was the custom in those days - he was a year 1887 - he went to Hamburg for an apprenticeship. There he went to the marina and got hired as a machinist on a ship and that's how he became a sailor. He took a boat trip to New York and back. And then when World War I broke out, he had to go back because he was drafted. His parents called him and said he would be in danger of I don't know what, so he went back and was in the Marines again in the Austrian army. I have his notes of all the things he experienced and everywhere he went, how they wondered in the Canary Islands why it was called that. He remembered it very much. Then he came back and started a business, so to speak. In America, he saw how they needed a ladder in the home, for example. He was such that he hired some workshop in Trávnice, and there he invented the ironing board, it was in some film how this Burian couldn't fold it up and take it apart. They were such nice things. He sold it at the fair until he worked his way up to his own apprentice, he started like that. When he was still in America, he used to send his parents the money he made. Then they used that to pay the rent on the field where my father started to build [the factory]."
"I say, the story is nothing extraordinary. There have been people worse off. You have to deal with it. Fortunately, we weren't raised as factory girls. We just weren't. My father said, 'I don't know the word "can't," so learn it.' And that was that. So that's been very good for our lives. I told you, nobody's gonna bring me to my knees.
My sister had it worse, she wasn't of age yet, she was dating a guy who had emigrated. He was also a jeweler. Then I found out when I got home. State Security was at her house to pick her up. They took her to Liberec, where they left her in a cell without a handle, they wanted her to cooperate. That was impossible. For a long time she was psychologically terribly affected by it. I wasn't so afraid yet, because I had no direct reason to be threatened or beaten, not at all. She said it was terrible. Like, we went to the movies at 5:30, and there was a car behind us. She kept looking back, afraid she was gonna get picked up. She said that they took her to Paceřák [Paceřický Hill, about 10 km in the fields from Turnov] that night. And they dropped her off there. She said that she was never a believer, but she prayed to get home somehow. She was afraid for a long time. We burned the correspondence we sent each other when I was already in Prague. Then it all went to hell."
"I got a retraction for my 50th birthday, when it was all settled, that I was too democratic. It wouldn't work like that. To this day, I don't know. It was funny, today you laugh about it. There was an all-union meeting and they were going to give out some medals. The girls were like, 'You're gonna get that too.' I don't know, I'm going in there as a regular person. I've already been recalled on December 1, it was my sixth birthday, and I got this present on December 1. And we were still arguing about whether I was going to work in the children's department or the gynecology department, the children's department was run by the chairwoman of the Communist Party. I said I didn't want it. He said he could give me an order. I said that I knew the Labour Code, I could do a month a year of ordered work. He said, 'I can let you sweep the yard too.' I know the code, 30 days a year. So I was ordered to work 30 days in December somewhere as a department nurse and 30 days in January."
"It was already February, actually. So by having just my mother, my grandmother with us and my aunt, those older relatives. We all lived together. I was at school, so I didn't experience moving out. That was the next time I came home and we were living somewhere else. We had big dogs that were offered to us and the next day they weren't living, we didn't even see them anymore. We had broken doorknobs. The militia guarded us in the corridor of the apartment we had in the factory. It was a bit scary. Well, we survived. They moved us into a house that was for employees before the conversion. Well, we still live there today."
Květoslava Wodziková, née Bartoňová, was born on 6 December 1933 in Turnov. Her father, Josef Bartoň, was hired as a young man on an ocean liner to New York, where he stayed and worked for two years. He returned from the USA to enlist in the Austro-Hungarian army and joined the navy. He served on the warship Emperor Charles VI between 1910 and 1918, and thus lived through the First World War. After returning home, he started his own business and, thanks to his own patents, built up the successful company Barton Yord, which produced garden furniture. Josef Bartoň died in 1947, shortly after the communists came to power and nationalized the company and took all the family‘s property. The Bartoň family continued to face persecution, the sister of the witness was prosecuted by State Security Service (StB), and the uncle killed himself after his shop was taken away. Květoslava Wodziková became a nurse, initially working in Turnov, Varnsdorf or Frýdlant, where she married and started a family. Her so-called bourgeois origins became an obstacle throughout her life, leading to the break-up of her first marriage. She went to Prague, where from 1966 she worked at the Institute for Mother and Child Care, for a long time as head nurse. In 1983 she was demoted to a regular employee for being too „democratic“. After the Velvet Revolution, she participated in restitution proceedings, and after a protracted process, she regained only part of her property. In 2022 she lived in Turnov.
Květoslava Bartoňová (right) with her sister Adéla wearing a necklace with the slogan 'Save laundry, save your hands', promoting the hand and electric washing machines of the Bartoň YORD factory, ca. 1938
Květoslava Bartoňová (right) with her sister Adéla wearing a necklace with the slogan 'Save laundry, save your hands', promoting the hand and electric washing machines of the Bartoň YORD factory, ca. 1938
Mixed children's choir before the war - Adéla Bartoňová 2nd row from the bottom, first girl on the left (white dress, plaid shirt), Květoslava Bartoňová in the same clothes, third girl in the same row
Mixed children's choir before the war - Adéla Bartoňová 2nd row from the bottom, first girl on the left (white dress, plaid shirt), Květoslava Bartoňová in the same clothes, third girl in the same row
A factory tower about fifteen metres high, which the already seriously ill Josef Barton climbed in May 1945 and hoisted the Czechoslovak national flag.
A factory tower about fifteen metres high, which the already seriously ill Josef Barton climbed in May 1945 and hoisted the Czechoslovak national flag.
A house for employees, where the family was evicted in 1948. Květoslava Wodziková still lives there today. In the background, the factory chimney on the grounds of the Bartoň Yord factory, 2019
A house for employees, where the family was evicted in 1948. Květoslava Wodziková still lives there today. In the background, the factory chimney on the grounds of the Bartoň Yord factory, 2019
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!
