Mgr. Bohumil Nádhera

“It was complicated for me and my mum because my brother was being treated for tonsillitis in Tanvald hospital. Back then tonsillitis was quite an unpleasant illness, I think that it took six weeks to cure it because antibiotics were not known. So, at first, my mum went with a pram and me to Tanvald hospital to pick up my brother. German doctors did not want to let him go because according to their opinion, he had not been fully cured. Mum who could speak both German and Czech very well managed to find a Czech doctor and he arranged for us to take him. We had to wait all night for the train to the interior at the train station. It was one of the most horrible nights I experienced as a child. The Germans were already going wild. We cried and sobbed a lot there. You could constantly hear Germans screaming, thanking the führer for returning their homes, Heimat, to them. Even though they had lived with Czechs in Czechoslovakia for hundreds of years, at that moment they considered the Reich, not the Czech Republic, to be their homeland.”

“Because of the fact we lived in seclusion, some people like partisans appeared in those forests close to us. I know they had guns, machine guns during those last days. And there was a railway line about a kilometre as the crow flies, and they were shooting at the trains from the hill above it. Then the Russians came there, it was a second squad. They arrived with horses and lorries. They liked it at our place, so they camped in the meadows. There was a village half an hour's walk from us, I went to get beer for my father, then I took it home and the Russians confiscated the beer. And to stop me crying, they gave me a bicycle. It was the first bicycle that I ever saw, they had confiscated it somewhere, so it was already quite old. I rode it three or four times and I had to throw it away. Its tube cracked and I could not ride it anymore. And another thing. When the Russians moved away, they gave two horses to our family. What could we do with them? Nothing. So, we handed them over to the National Committee.“

“Back then there were activities to save here what we could from culture. We as a group went to the attics of houses and villas of wealthier people in Lidové sady because they stored old German books there. People started to burn some things. But because there was a library here, they started carrying it in the library because it was found out that the books were really valuable. Especially the local history books. Even though we took a lot of them to the library, I as a student saved a lot of them and took a lot of them away. And I still keep them on my bookshelves, I used them a lot during historical walking tours. When we arrived at the station in Janův Důl there were also Germans books there, I know that there was the book Mein Kampf by Hitler which of course the employee did not take with him when he ran away because he had other things to do than to take these books. I know that some books were destroyed, some were burnt, and some were taken and hidden by smarter people. The books were later in libraries and during communism, it was hard to access them as the so-called Sudetikum. It meant that one had to have a special document for them. However, some books were left and after all they are evidence of the past of the area.”

“When the screenings were done, they found out that I was not suitable. It was because when Gottwald was elected my father said about him here at the railroad company that he boozed with German Communists in the Sudetenland in 1938. They organized a meeting in Sokol gymnasium back then and Klement Gottwald came to attend it. And they, as we know from history, celebrated here. Well, my dad said it about him in public at the train station. A colleague of his reported him and my dad was fired immediately. Although they employed him again a month later and wanted him to apologize, it stayed in his and my cadre report.”

“They placed me with the reconnaissance unit in the Bohemian Forest which was quite dangerous because it was in the 1950s. We as members of the reconnaissance unit deputized border guards. Fortunately, after a month I was selected for the NCO school at the airport in Liberec, even though I did not want to go there. Because I had already had enough of school. An English Rangers captain was the commander of the school, so we as members of the reconnaissance unit experienced training as if in England. We had to wear a tie to muster every morning. After finishing the training, I returned to a separate reconnaissance unit in the Bohemian Forest. And because I did sports and there was already an army physical education club back then, plus I had friends at headquarters, I was transferred to Sušice. There was an army garrison house where I played volleyball instead of soldiering." 1:35:35 - 1:36:56