"The end of the war, even I remember that. It was about four o'clock at night, and suddenly there was this interesting silence, almost disgusting. People were getting up. Some were brave and went to see what was going on, and there were already Russian troops coming through. I know from hearsay that about five or six soldiers were the first to go and they went through the village and came back. Then the others went. It was said that they were soldiers who had committed some offence, and that somehow they had redeemed themselves by having to go through the village so that there wouldn't be any unnecessary bloodshed, if it was fortified, if they could get through."
"That was such a bad illusion of my dad. He thought Bedihošť was big, there was a sugar factory, a railway station... that it would be bombed. So, the whole family moved to Otonovice, a nearby village between Hrubčice and Čehovice. There we stayed with a well-known farmer." - "That was in 1945?" - "Yes, that was the end of the war. I remember that we found out that there was the Valová River and that the Germans were going to blow up the bridge, so three days before the end of the war, we went around the stream at night, the whole family, to Bedihošť, and there we were hidden in the big cellars of the large farm. There were a lot of people there."
"During the war my father was stationed in Breslau, the Germans occupied part of Poland, he worked in a sugar factory. The bombing started and they just fled from the camp where they were living. They took advantage of the confusion. Then they walked all the way to Olomouc, where there already were the borders of the Protectorate. His cousin lived there somewhere, and his father said that he had jumped over a fence somewhere and got into a house in the garden. Coincidentally, that was his cousin's house. That helped him and he got home."
Václav Horák was born on 23 May 1935 in Prostějov to parents Žofie Horáková, née Labounková, and Alois Horák as the younger of two children. The family lived in Bedihošť. The mother worked in agriculture and later in a warehouse. Her father was a bricklayer‘s helper and after the war he helped out in a car workshop. During the World War II he was forced to labour in Breslau. During the bombing he managed to escape and return home. He experienced the bombing and the German retreat after the tank battle near Klenovice. From 1945 to 1950 he was a member of the Scouts. He trained as a turner in Přerov. Later he graduated from the mechanical engineering school and worked as a designer in Ingstav and Agrostroj in Prostějov. In 1967 he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia under the promise of a better job. He witnessed the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops in Prostějov. After the screening in 1970 he was dismissed from his position as a technologist at Agrostroj and his membership in the Communist Party was suspended. He moved to the directorate of Restaurants and Canteens, where he worked as head of maintenance. Later he founded the so-called Technical and Material Centre in Prostějov. After the revolution he taught mathematics and physics at the second level of primary school. At the time of recording in 2022 he lived in Prostějov. He died in 2023.
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