Ing. Miloš Krýže

* 1941

  • "There were still wartime or post-war rations on coal, just as there were on all food, clothes and shoes until 1953. The rationing was such that we only heated a small kitchen in the apartment, and quite modestly at that, never overdoing it. The only exceptions were Christmas and New Year's Eve when we heated the living room as well. That was glorious, heating the room, and we enjoyed it very much. But that was twice a year only. Otherwise, the bedrooms, both my parents' and my brother's and mine, were skilfully oriented to the north and there were no stoves, and so I remember waking up with steam coming from our mouths from about November to March every year."

  • "Now, instead of being allowed to correct their mistake and flee to the Czech Republic, they were detained and perhaps... I don't want to say imprisoned, but taken away and temporarily interned in Magdeburg, in what was like a large and, I would say, relatively peaceful prison. They were called hostages and they didn't work. They were kept there and likely even received quite limited pocket money, because I can't imagine my father sending postcards from somewhere in the city, but it was probably happening in one form of censorship or another. Still, they were relatively free and had no work duty; it had nothing to do with total deployment."

  • "When it became obvious that it was going to be bad and a disaster was coming, [dad] mobilised enough to... By then, the last train had left, but he got a cartman with a wagon, a German of course, and he convinced him with a hefty sum of cash to load what could fit on the wagon. There were blankets and maybe some basic dishes and papers, and my mother and my brother left for the 'country', as they said at the time, sometime in September 1938. Back then, there was the division between the Sudetenland and the 'country'; that's how the Czechoslovak Republic was divided."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Jablonec nad Nisou, 11.11.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:25:23
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

We would wake up with steam coming out of our mouths November to March

Miloš Krýže in his wedding photograph
Miloš Krýže in his wedding photograph
zdroj: Witness's archive

Miloš Krýže was born in Prague on 5 June 1941. His father was imprisoned in Magdeburg during the war, having been abducted from the border town of Varnsdorf where he had worked at the post office. Miloš Krýže‘s mother with his elder brother fled to Prague at the last minute. After the war, the Krýže family moved from Prague to Jablonec nad Nisou where both parents got jobs at the post office. The family was given a villa, but it was ruined and the post-war coal rations were not enough to heat it. Miloš Krýže went to school with German classmates, but they were deported one by one. He completed a grammar school and enrolled in a technical high school. He completed his education at the University of Transport in Žilina. He lived in Prague in 2022.