„Then 1944 came, I was attending the penultimate year of secondary school. They grouped all the students, picked the healthy ones and those were drafted to the so-called protectorate Technische Nothilfe. There was a squad in Prague in Slezská street where students from all over the country were herded and they prepared us for removing rubble after air raids. That was our main job, removing debris and such. My first so-called Einsatz was in Pardubice where we removed rubble of the bombed Fantovka, a factory that produced gasoline. I slacked the work, all the students did, we literally sabotaged the work even though at that time, we wouldn’t call it sabotage. We just wouldn’t work for the Germans at all. I would walk around, I didn’t touch any work, rubble was being moved and dead bodies were being removed. I did not do this, I was taking tools to the nearby blacksmith’s workshop to have them sharpened and fixed. I would go there carrying the tools for “sharpening”, I had a chat with the blacksmith and returned with the tools untouched.”
„Then they transferred us to Prague to the Pankrác prison where I was until the court hearing. That court hearing took place in Liberec, it was a public hearing which should destroy everything that was said about the scouts. There was a prosecuting attorney who even said that the scouts taught children how to murder people silently. And there was one of the defendants, one Tomsa, who stood up and said „Madam attorrrrrrrney!“ And poor Tomsa got three years in jail and so did my dad. But the court hearing and the sentences were reasonable despite that prosecuting attorney because we were sentenced for not reporting a crime, that organising scouts is going on despite the organisation being banned.“
„Accidentally, and it was a bit of bad luck but then a certain advantage for me, a teacher brought over a bloke who was wanted by the Gestapo all over the Bohemian Paradise area. They had chased him at Vyskeř where they shot another guy thinking it was him. And while on the run, he got in contact with a teacher from that village west of Rovensko who brought him to our place saying that he had nowhere to hide him. And my dad took him in. We called him Buk or Suk and he hid him in the new school building in a workshop under the stage. It was not a long-term solution so [dad] asked a Lomnice scout, a Mr. Korbelář, to shorten the hallway on the second floor where our flat was, by one window. There were large windows in that hallway. Nobody noticed, not even the school maintenance guy who would go up there to stoke up the stove. They moved stage props in front of the hideout, the scout from Lomnice painted the wall and the new guy was lodged there.“
„On the 20th of April in 1945, there were three or four of us boys and we ran away from our squad. We took a train towards the East because the Red Army was progressing. When we were approaching Karlštejn, we were attacked by ground-attack aircraft. Those were airplanes whose job was to damage transportation. We ran out of the train car a bit up on a hill and we watched. I even saw the pilot, a black guy, aiming at our locomotive which was obviously hit. Right away, steam spurted out and it was all rusty. And next to us, it was like a miracle, I saw a German soldier who escaped from the train. He dug in the earth so fast that there was just a spot, about a metre by some 30 centimetres and everything was hidden, he was so scared of air raids and he had previous experience.“
Karel Hlaváček was born on the 11th of August in 1927 in Lomnice nad Popelkou. After having attended basic school, he continued at secondary school in Jičín. During the WWII, he witnessed how his father Karel Hlaváček, a schoolmaster, helped people who were wanted by hte Gestapo in 1942. At about that time, he became acquaintained with resistance fighter Vladimir Kratina. In 1942, after the information about the Antimony paratrooper group leaked to the authorities, Karel Hlaváček the father was arrested and imprisoned in the Small Fortress in Terezín. The witness, at that time studying at the secondary school, was summoned as forced labour to the Technishe Nothilfe squad whose job was to clear rubble after bombings. After the war, the family settled in Liberec where Karel graduated from the secondary school in 1946. Since his childhood, Karel Hlaváček was a scout, his father was a scout leader as well. After the communist régime took power, he was arrested in 1952 and held in custody in Liberec and in the Pankrác prison in Prague. Then he was sentenced for several months of imprisonment for the illegal scout activities. He was rehabilitated in 1968 when his sentence was annulled. He held several jobs in Jablonecká bižuterie [Jablonec Fashion Jewellery] company, in the Czech Statistical Office and in the Prefa factory in Ústí nad Labem. His lifetime hobby was volunteering for the Czech Tourist Club. Karel Hlaváček died on the 15th of January in 2020.
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!
