Josef Tejkl

* 1944

  • “Right in 1950, when we had a field, there were obligatory supplies. I know there were potatoes called “industry potatoes”, they were only for production of some alcohol. And they had to be loaded on railway cars in Jablonné. So, we had to provide 20 quintals of potatoes for a supply. It was four crowns for a quintal. We had to deliver them to the train station in Jablonné. There were waggons standing in a queue from the quare to the train station and everyone was waiting to get to the railway car and they had to manually shovel it with pitchfork from the waggon to the railway car. It looked like this: because the cows were upset and overworked, they were leaking a lot, so the way was made of cowpats. Some people took their horses but majority took cows.”

  • “Jablonné was in the protectorate, we were in Sudetenland. A Czech village, there were only four or three Germans registered. And my father was transferred to joiner’s shop in Žichlínek. He had to cross the borders to get to Jablonné. No bus did drive from here, the nearest drove from Výprachtice to Lanškroun. And there [in Žichlínek] was some strict German. In the winter, my father had to be waiting on the bus in Výprachtice at half five in the morning. At that time there were severe winters, snowdrifts, a lot of snow and the bus did not come. So, they went to Žichlínek on foot; that is fifteen kilometres from here. They came there tired in ten o’clock and were beaten with a cane by their boss, the German. He did not care that the bus did not come.”

  • “After my father died, I started the school in Výprachtice in autumn. We had potatoes in the field. My sister went to flax scutching factory in Čenkovice, so she was not home and my mother was left on her own. So, after school I went with children from Čenkovice to their village and from there in the field. My mother took some food for me and I changed clothes and we harvested potatoes together. We had two cows but they were not listening to me so my mother led the cows and I controlled a potato harvester. I was small. The potato harvester had three wheels; it had two tilling wheels in the front and one controlling wheel with a handlebar in the back. And because I was small, the handlebar was well above my head. You can imagine how it looked like when we were harvesting…”

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    Bystřec, 21.04.2021

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We hitched the pram with handicapped sister onto cows and went to the field

Josef Tejkl, 1963
Josef Tejkl, 1963
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Josef Tejkl was born on July 29th 1944 in Bystřec near Jablonné nad Orlicí. His father Vincenc Tejkl (1897-1955) went through the World War I and died when his son was 11 years old, in 1955. After that his mother Anna, née Uhrová (1908-1972), maintained their family farm alone with children. Because they were destroyed through supplies which were impossible for them to fulfil, they joined the united agricultural cooperative (JZD) in 1956. Josef Tejkl experienced the impact of forced collectivization of agriculture in the 1950s in Bystřec, including forced eviction of three families. He had an older sister Marie (1940-2016), and twin sisters Ludmila and Anna who died at a young age. Right after finishing elementary school Josef Tejkl started working in JZD and stayed there till his retirement in 2006. His whole life he worked as a professional driver and he even drove motor vehicles in his compulsory military service in 1962-1964. In 1971 he married Marie Grunwaldová from Bystřec and they had four daughters. In June 1976 he was drafted to a military exercise and spent few days in the military area in Brdy. The witness was in contact with his wife’s half-uncle, a military chaplain Hugo Vaníček, S.J. (1906-1995).