"So, I have to say that I worked at Wagner, which was then renamed TOS (machine tool factory). I was apprenticed there from 1942, when I first joined the apprenticeship for a year, then we came to Halk and I worked for another two years as an apprentice. One day during the air raids - it was December, I would have to name the date - there were big air raids, really big bloody air raids. In the factory they sent us home, there were no shelters anywhere. There were three of us apprentices, me, František Mádr, Miroslav Štrek and Alois Pazdera, we ran away. We were three apprentices, we escaped. We stopped in Hodolany, already on the way to our place, to Bystřice, behind the fence where the Hodolany playground was. We thought we would wait it out and go back to the factory, but the air raids continued. It happened that a bomb exploded behind us not far behind the playground as they were defusing the bombs. We told ourselves we wouldn't wait there any longer and we would run home. We ran across the road in the direction of Bystrovany, taking a shortcut. When we were at Bystrovany, that's the village, we got to a clearing and we heard above us - you can't say it was directly above us or a short distance away - but we kept running down the road, and when we stopped and turned around, we were about five hundred yards away, we see some pieces of the plane coming down, and we saw apparently human bodies flying down fast. That was a moment where one of us shouted, 'Look what's happening!' A German fighter and a bomber had apparently shot each other down there, and they were apparently delayed, flying alone. There was... and we heard a bang. We were looking, I'm looking for the time, as it was, because we were running, and when we stopped, we could see everything falling from that plane. And then we saw one parachute, I think it was the German. All the Americans were dead. None of them survived, they have a memorial at Bystrovany near Bystřička."
"After the annexation of the Sudetenland, our borders were marked because we were neighbours with the Mariánské Údolí and Mrsklesy. This means that the Germans then put such wooden stakes, always a piece apart, on top of that such a bundle of straw. Then I did a stupid thing there with a friend, that we went to set it on fire - and the Germans were just walking along the track. That was our stupidity, which I invented, they found us out right away. We ran away, they didn't see us at all. The borders were marked and they were coming to us - our people started pointing this out - that the railway employees were buying butter, meat and so on from us. Germans from the Sudetenland immediately began to come to Bystřice to make large purchases, just as they do today in Poland."
"A lot of employees from the sugar factory went to military service, they had to enlist. It was 1938. They went - I know for a fact - up at our place, somewhere in Dětřichov to the fortresses, there was somewhere in those villages, they worked there. But then, of course, when there was such a turn of events that the president left the republic, there was an order from Hácha to disband the army, so they came home. On the one hand, it was good that the fathers came back, that nothing happened, because at that time they went along with it and said that hardly anyone would come back from the fortresses (they knew where they were going), so it did happen, the fathers came back."
František Mádr was born on 15 March 1927 in Velká Bystřice into the family of a sugar factory worker, his mother was a housewife and he had a sister. His whole life was and is connected with Velká Bystřice, where he experienced the beginning of the Second World War and the following war years and local war events. He watched from afar as the Germans set fire to a house in the village at the end of the war after it was discovered that one of the families was hiding a partisan there. He witnessed the air battle near Bystřice in 1944 and the liberation of the village in 1945. In January 1945 he was forcibly deployed in Hranice, from where he escaped. He played handball actively for the Velká Bystřice team. In 1942-1945, he trained as a locksmith in the Wagner factory (after 1950 TOS) in Olomouc. He worked there until 1949, when he left for the air defence. He graduated from the officer‘s school, was in the army until 1954 and worked for the air defence in Olomouc. In 1953 he married Dagmar, née Dotřelová, and they raised two daughters, Ivana and Dagmar. In 1954 he retired from the civil service due to health problems. He spent most of his working life as a foreman in the armourers‘ workshops in Olomouc at Tabulový Vrch. Later he worked for ten years as a foreman in the production of the Mora Moravia company in Mariánské Údolí. In 1974-1976 he held the position of mayor of Velká Bystřice. In 2024, at the time of filming, he lived in Velká Bystřice.
František Mádr in the front row, first from the left with the flag - Otta Bayer standing next to him, Day of Conscription at the statue of TGM in Velká Bystřice, 1937
František Mádr in the front row, first from the left with the flag - Otta Bayer standing next to him, Day of Conscription at the statue of TGM in Velká Bystřice, 1937
František Mádr standing above, third from the left, handball team, Velká Bystřice, 1941, first on the left is teacher Komenda, who came to the village after the occupation of the Sudetenland
František Mádr standing above, third from the left, handball team, Velká Bystřice, 1941, first on the left is teacher Komenda, who came to the village after the occupation of the Sudetenland
Autorský tým: Mikoláš Hlisnikovský, Nela Dvořáková, Julie Horáková, Sabina Košťálková a Adam Ladman
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