Ivan Zajíc

“It was a monument to the first fallen soldier in the Austro-Prussian war in 1866 which was in Stráž nad Nisou, the dead soldier´s name was Emerich Berta. There is also a plaque saying how he was fatally wounded. The monument was built in 1896, I think that it was built by an association, but I cannot tell you right now what it was called. And there are many of those monuments. Among others in Liberec, here in Stráž, in Chrastava and also in Dlouhé Mosty. When they built it in 1896, there was a ceremony, and several famous people of that time attended it, including Bismarck´s relatives.”

“As a local authority member, I went to the meetings and then for a beer. That is why I still got asked what we talked about at the meetings and other things. You simply could not drink your beer in peace. So, I got inspired by neighbouring villages, for example Raspenava where they were already publishing it and (decided) that I could publish it. Moreover, nobody read the minutes from the meetings that were put on the notice boards. Because ninety per cent of people drive, nobody walks, so where would they read them? So, I said to myself that I would take it directly to their homes and that is it. But I set myself the task. The beginnings were tough. Firstly, I had to think it up. Secondly, I had to convince people to write entries. I told fire-fighters who got allowance to write, and I said it to gardeners, and athletes that if everyone wrote some lines, we would have it. Sometimes, it was difficult with them. At first, I got the articles handwritten on paper, I had to sit down at the typewriter and transcribe everything, collect photos, and find a printer. I found one, brought it to them, they put it together, then I proofread it and it went to print. It was pretty laborious all the way through. Then the development went forward, there were floppy disks, so I had to get a computer for that. Lately, it was easy-peasy. It was easier. I got the articles via e-mail or on a flash disc. The old photos were scanned.”

“They transferred her from place to place. Because she was Catholic, she went to church and among other things, she took care of a vicarage after the war when the German priest was displaced from Stráž nad Nisou, former Habendorf. She taught in Stráž nad Nisou at school and on 25 February 1948 she was transferred to a one-room school in Bedřichov in the Jizera Mountains. She was supposed to live at school but because she was afraid there, she asked a priest from the Liberec parish to find an accommodation for her elsewhere via Jablonec parishes. He got it for her in a vicarage in Janov nad Nisou which was not inhabited, only a police officer and his family lived there. However, a school inspector found out about it, a comrade, and a month later, they sent her to Oldřichov na Hranicích. And from Oldřichov na Hranicích, she sent a request to the Pardubice district asking them to teach there. That she had already fulfilled her long-standing obligation to teach in the borderlands. Because she had been there for three years. Of course, they did not approve her request. So, she asked to be allowed to teach in Machnín. So, they transferred her to Machnín. In 1950, she got married to my dad who was a widower and had a son and daughter from the first marriage. When she married him, she asked the inspector or the school committee or whatever, to be allowed to teach again in Stráž nad Nisou. Because my sister was two years old, so she had to take her to Stráž to kindergarten and then to go to Machnín to teach. She was not granted that, so she went to the school inspector and told him to imagine that it could not be done that way. And he was good enough to tell her that her father could take his daughter to work, he was at the flagman station, and he could watch her there."

“Dad got himself into trouble when he served as a flagman because all the flagman stations and the stations in Liberec and Hrádek nad Nisou were connected via phone, so all the flagmen could talk to each other and they heard him saying during one of their debates that communists would do whatever they wanted. And a 'good person' reported him. He was sentenced to a month in prison and to a year´s suspended sentence. And after it he was well-behaved.”