"Already during the first weeks after the war there was a huge renaissance of the Scout movement and the Scout troops arose even in towns and villages that had no Scout troops before the war. So a Scout troop was also established in Cholina and it was only natural that one of its first leaders was my brother. I myself became a Wolf Cub as early as July 19 and we headed for our first Scout camp by the beginning of August. Nobody gave a damn about the fact that we had to walk there, that we transported our things on carts and that it lasted only a few days. It was my first camping in a tent. We played games that we had never played before. We had to patrol the camp during the night and we even tried to cook in our cauldron. Our tents were mainly trophies from the German Wehrmacht and our uniforms were more like a 'motley crew'. On the other hand, I could brag with a yellow bandanna and my brother's Cub shirt."
"After the coup in February 1948 even our children's organization started to bother the Communists and they begun to prepare its termination. One of their first steps was to allow only children between 6 and 15 to be members of the Scout. The older ones were automatically put into the ČSM (Czech union of the youth). They established a so-called 'action committee' in the Scout headquarters that was composed of Scouts who were at the same time members of the communist party and who were willing to eliminate the Scout movement. But since we were kids, we had no clue about this sort of thing. We were bothered by rather by the fact that the ‘Vpřed’ and ‘Scout’ magazines stopped appearing because all of a sudden, in 1949, the local action committee took away our clubroom which we had in the local fire station and so we could not meet. It was the year when I was charged with leading the Wolf Cubs as their advisor. Even the Scout's cry changed in those four years to a more mature form. For almost all of the year 1950, we met either at our place or on short half-day trips. In the meantime the schools created pioneer troops and we were quietly recommended to disband. Another sad thing was that our clubroom was constantly locked. Shortly after the coup the communists forced my father to leave the SNB (National Security Corps - regular police), where he had enlisted just after the war. This also meant no pension for our family and therefore a lot of trouble for whole family.”
"I left for my studies in Prague in the middle of September and the State Security members came for me all the way from Olomouc by the end of November. They picked me up at school when was in my class. Guys in leather coats handcuffed me and took me to the infamous police station in Bartolomějská Street. From there they took me to my college dorms where they searched my wardrobe and triumphantly found a few copied political jokes in my jacket. Three officers and a driver from the State Security in Olomouc came all the way to Prague only to investigate my 'crime'. At first, I didn't know what was going on or why they were beating me up because the first interrogation didn't concern the political jokes but the identity of the people that I was meeting and what property we owned etc. I actually got the first slap for my impertinence because I thoughtlessly corrected some grammatical mistakes in their report, just like teachers do. I also offered them to write the report myself because I saw that they had no idea how to use a typewriter."
Ing. Vladimír Rogl (1936) was originally a map editor, he graduated from the Land-surveying faculty at the Czech Technological University. For almost 30 years he worked as a programmer of automatic computers. Since 1993 he has been cooperating with Gelton publishing and after nine years he started to work for Slánské listy, where he focuses mostly on interviews, reports, crime stories and trips to the not so distant history of Slaný. In the 1990‘s he also worked in the Prague‘s Dobrý Večerník and Zemské noviny. He was a Scout since 1945 and between 1968 and 1970 he was in the Scout‘s central council. For long years he was leading the children‘s troop in Prague - Vinohrady and he is either an author or co-author of eight publications for youngsters dealing with the topics of tourism and camping. His book ‚By the campfire‘ was awarded the annual Olympia publishing award in 1968. He was investigated several times between the 1950‘s and 1970‘s by the State Security because of his activities in the Scout movement.
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!
