Vladimír Suk

"We have also experienced a campaign against tradesmen. I'll tell you frankly. They came at night, when I was still in primary school in Neustupov. They raided at night. I remember my parents standing by the cupboards, my aunt too. And they searched the whole house till morning. The attics, the shop, the cellars. They were looking for some concealed goods. I didn't talk to my father about what they were looking for - they didn't find anything. So they left again. That's how they did it. That's how it was really. It's not a story by Božena Němcová, it's documented. My father was most upset when, as a merchant, he was still a private owner - no, he was already in that Jednota, I think... well, when they pressed him on something, they found something for him, I think it was the overvaluation of vegetables, because in those days prices were stable, butter was still ten crowns, but vegetables prices were changing. And it was enough for somebody from the national committee to come and sign how many vegetables there were that were changed to a different price when it was getting cheaper. So they took him away, my father, and he was in the morning at the interrogations in Votice, and that was the first time he said to me: 'Vláďa, that was the first time in my life I was afraid.' Well, they were persuading him to cooperate with State Security. My father, of course, said, 'I was so afraid, look, because I had known it.' When they let him go, he came home and wrote them a letter. My brother told me that he blamed it on his wife, that his wife would certainly see it in him. And they stopped bothering him. He wrote that he wouldn't do it. They told him, 'Mr. Suk, people trust you, you hear things in that shop...'"