Marian Column

Anna Vašátková spent her childhood in a homestead in Červený Potok. Her parents bought it at the end of 1920s. In the purchase agreement there was a statement that they also have to take care of a Marian column that was on their estate. Ms Vašátková is probably the last witness who knows the troubled history of this column. “People from Červený Potok buried there the dead during the plague. When there was the plague for the second time people were so afraid of infection during the burials, so they put all the dead in one cottage and set it on fire. That is why there was that Marian column there.” Our witness's family took care of the column thoroughly. “They let it underpin and my mother always made a wreath around it on the day of the death.” But Anna Vašátková also remembers that when they had to leave the house in 1948 and suddenly their homestead was taken by a state farm, the column and several other houses were destroyed. “Then they built different things on our estate. There is a horrible mess there. They built there two big stores. And probably threw the column to some foundations. Those people did not have any relation to it. They even did not know why it was there. Probably heathens. The Marian column did not mean anything to them. It just got lost. When I walk around that place where it used to stand, I always remember it. From that place there led a footpath to the upper homesteads. Nowadays they all are demolished. No one can see anything.”