"We went to welcome the Red Army, it was the evening or afternoon of the ninth, there were games everywhere, flags everywhere. And instead of the Red Army, the SS (SS troops, ed.) were on tanks. Run home quickly. So we ran home. It was a frantic escape, really. What Josef Škvorecký describes to some extent in Zbabělcích u Běloveské celnice (The Cowards at the Belovezhskaya Customs House) also took place there. It was there that the last, one of the last horrors of the war in the Náchod region took place." -"And what was that? Excuse me, what was one of the last horrors of the war?"
"Instead of the Red Army, the SS were still backing away from them." -"I understand that. And what happened?"- "And there was a clash. First of all, some of the defenders were murdered, slaughtered, there were Red Army men there, slaughtered, mutilated. Well, nothing nice. They left them, I mean, they passed through Náchod, we ran away, we lived in the Old Town near the main road at that time, we ran to hide behind the river, and sometime after midnight, that it was quiet, that it was clear, and then the next day we saw the Red Army troops, they said then. It was something new, something different and it was the second shock and it was, I don't know, was it a reprisal? Revenge? The massacre of those SS men in the brewery in Nachod. See Cowards." - "That's also the thing that's described there in the book actually. In a slightly milder form than it really was."-"It was rough. Afterwards we went into town and we saw, there were two trucks, fully loaded, and I just couldn't understand as a kid, there were these dead bodies like logs, why there was an armed escort following them with rifles drawn. Like, I didn't get it."
"And one night, a banging on the door. Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo, ed.) But it's good to foreshadow what preceded it. They were looking for those boys (Uncle Mirek, ed.) and at the family, weren't they. The refugees, the runaways, and the first one they stopped by my father's sister's house to see if he was there. They weren't, of course. Well, now we're going to go to the Old Town, I've got the Konvalinkas there, and my aunt says, don't go there, it'll be bad. Why would it be bad? Well, they come to our place, they knock on the door, Mom opens it. They didn't start shouting, my mother started shouting. What's going on? My dad says he's working in Metalbauerk for the Messerschmitts, for the Reich, in the morning, he's going to his shift, they're storming around, the kid's asleep and has to go to school. They stayed at the door. So they were looking for this Mirek or his friend, right? Well, she got them out very quickly, said we wouldn't even shine the light under the bed. Well, and really, this visit was very brief, but it just set the whole house on fire."
"Well, with this Joska, we eventually got so far that we got into it. And in order to express somehow our situation, in those aids, I still have some from Norway, from Sweden, so on. So we expressed our situation with parliamentary elections, how it looks like in our country. So, for example, the conservatives, that was how we have it with my dad and my mom, if they are not some kind of Hamans. The Social Democrats, that was a study of how we are studying whether we are doing well or not. Then there were cultural things, then there were things about how we were doing with the girls, eventually. Well, and the necessary side was the Communists, they expressed when we were floundering, just their position in those electoral tables. And we always communicated once a week, first we evaluated each other, and then it was dropped. Years passed, and in 1957, gentlemen from the Ministry of the Interior presented me with a letter. The letter begins with the words: Hello, Čajan. My friend called me Čajan. And I called him Klapan, so I called him maybe Klapanek too. Well, and when they presented it to me after all the rigmarole before, he had beautiful handwriting, it was like something out of school. So I'm shaking it in my eyes when I start to read: the situation in Finland is extremely critical, there are even armed uprisings in many cities, and we are threatened by danger from outside. And now, yes, what measures might have to be taken, so the immediate reaction and the election results below and now - Takes one to know one. So I have to tell you, it's a cipher. I was very surprised by their reaction. Either they must have recognized it themselves that it was a setup, so they took it.
František Konvalinka was born on 13 October 1934 in Náchod. His mother Anežka, née Zelená, was a spinner, his father František Konvalinka was a roofer and both parents were members of the Czechoslovak Hussite Church. His father was totally deployed during the Protectorate, but managed to escape and return to Náchod. From the school year 1944/1945 František Konvalinka entered the grammar school in Náchod. In May 1945 he witnessed first-hand the transport of dead German soldiers after the massacre in the brewery in Náchod. In the autumn of 1945, the family moved to Trutnov, and he started attending the local gymnasium. The headmaster would not let him take his matriculation exam, so he completed it in the preparatory year of the Huss Czechoslovak Divinity School, where he successfully graduated in 1957. Before graduating, he was summoned for questioning at the Ministry of the Interior, where he was questioned about his private cryptic correspondence with a friend and the situation in the Church. In the same year he married Zdenka Unger, with whom he had a son and a daughter. After graduating from the theological faculty, he did not receive state approval for his activities, had to complete his military service, and subsequently supported himself as a worker in Meopta Broumov and in a textile factory in Červený Kostelec. After three years, after a conflict with the church secretary, he decided to resign and started working at the Farmakon factory. There he was offered to join the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, which he refused. From 1967 to 1995 he worked at the Military Department in Olomouc as a civilian employee. From 1973 he was listed as an agent of the military counter-intelligence (then part of the State Security), but the witness denies knowingly cooperating. In June 1989, he regained state approval for his church activities and began working as a parish priest again until 2007, when he gradually reduced his work hours. Since 2016 he has been an external clergyman. In 2023 he was living in Olomouc.
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!
