"In our Socialist Union of Youth unit in Rotava where I was active, we used to do voluntary jobs. It was necessary to do and report something. We'd always do something like planting the trees, cleaning the forest or building a fence around the cemetery, improving the environment. Or we cleaned public spaces. I recall that. And even in the brown coal mine unit where I later transferred to, whenever we had to do some 'voluntary' job, we'd go help the foresters plant trees or something of the sort."
"In 1989 or 1990, there were more and more shiny cars coming across the border, bringing descendants of Sudeten Germans. This had obviously spread fear and panic. Sometimes, people even rang the bells. Despite the language barrier, the people asked with good intentions to visit or just peek into the houses where their parents were born. They would point to the grandama, grandpa, great-grandma, great-grandpa sitting in the back row of the car, who very much wished to see their home once again. The responses were usually good and they were welcome. But in some instances... Sometimes also due to the Germans' behavior who were angrily shouting: 'You had stolen this from us! This is our house!' This had happened in rare instances. These cases were then being published, people shared them via gossip and it made bad press. But as I'm saying, ninety-five percent had taken place in peace. I work as a tourist guide. I take people to places, we make various trips, hikes, exhibitions and publications. I have a lot of books. And all of this usually takes place peacefully. I even have a bunch of beautiful letters, which we had been and still are receiving from the Sudeten Germans. Many of them say openly: 'Our ancestors or us had lived here but don't think that just because now it is the Czechs living here, we'd want our properties back.'"
"That concentration camp must have been very brutal because the stories we read or hear about it are really terrible, almost too much to be published. This camp had been created from an original camp ran by the Nazis against Czech people. We have to be fair here - the Czechs and Slovaks had suffered greatly because of Nazism. But it can't be said that all Germans were Nazis. And not all Czechs and Slovaks were decent, either. There were plenty of collaborators among them. So if you ask me on the soldiers in Svoboda's army who then served on the Red Guards, I don't know how to answer that. I tend to say that people vary. In all the groups, there were people who did it as a matter of conviction and whose families had witnessed various atrocities, and who had been rightfully angry. And the others just wanted to soothe their conscience and be at the right time at the right place - at the right side of the barricade."
"The invisible eye of the Party and the Big Brother was omnipresent. Sometimes, I feel that this hadn't changed. I could sense back then - I won't deny that - that we were brought up in an environment of double morals. Today, we'd say double standards. Obviously, our school teacher had to ask us and fill in information about who had relatives living abroad. This took place at elementary school and even more so at grammar school. That was during the 1970s normalisation era. They asked which newspaper our parents were reading. It was desirable that at least someone had been reading 'Rudé právo' or something of the sort."
Petr Rojík was born on 24 February 1957 in the village of Přebuz in Krušné hory (Ore Mountain Range). His father Karel Rojík was Czech, his mother Edeltraud Pichl was German. He grew up in the a bilingual environment around the frontier and this remained a strong part of his identity. Ever since youth, he was interested in geology and in 1981, he also graduated from this subject at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Charles University in Prague. After a year of military service, he began working as a geologist in the Sokolov coal mines. Following the Velvet Revolution, he undertook postgraduate studies in applied environmental geology. As a hobby, he studies chronicles from Krušné hory and serves as a local guide. He wrote several books out of which the best know one is the History of Tin Mining in Western Ore Mountains published in 2000. He is also a researcher and collaborates with numerous Czech academic institutions. For ten years, he has taught a course at the Faculty of Natural Sciences. In the past, he also served as a member of the Government Council for National Minorities.
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