"Well, then I enjoyed all sorts of night marches where we would blow up the various railroad tracks around where the main line was from Zabreh to Belovar and beyond. I took part in that. We always blew up the lines in the evenings. And we youngsters used to be there as guards in case they were ambushed. And then we also used to go on patrols. That was my favourite. There were always three or four of us. Patrols were sent out on all sides where the roads led, to see if anything was going on or if there was an enemy. And once we met an Ustasha patrol. It was dark and snowy. And when we met them, they called out who was there, and we called out to them again. Until our patrol leader, a boy just a little bit older than us, asked them, 'Is that you, drugovja?' Well, as soon as he said that, they knew right away that we were partisans, so they started shooting at us. We had to immediately duck and crawl back. Luckily they didn't hit anybody. But it was just dust as they were shooting at us."
"With our [Czechoslovak Communists], I was disappointed only when they started such shamelessness of theirs. Arresting people for little things and all their trials. They liquidated their people. They were afraid of each other. That's when I thought, what kind of party is this where they're afraid of each other. Who's gonna turn who in and all that. I didn't like that. I never saw anything like that there [in my native Yugoslavia]."
"When I went back to Gudovac, I met partisans right at the beginning of the village and they asked me how things were in the town. Well, as we were talking, we came up to their headquarters. And their commander suddenly pointed out to me these little boys who had their rifles hanging down to the ground and good-naturedly told me to look, that even such a little boy was fighting for the liberation of his country, and I was such a man that I was only at home with my mother if I wasn't ashamed. I immediately told him that of course, I could fight too, why not? But I'll go home and get some warm clothes first. And he replied that I shouldn't be afraid, that they would send it all out of the house, that I shouldn't worry about it. And so I stayed right away. My brother had already been with the partisans, and it was also an offer that we always longed for among the students. We always talked about how we could join them. Then they took me to the yard and there was one of the Ustasha enemy family. He was trembling with fear about what was going to happen to him. Nobody hurt him. So we were there as new partisans and immediately went on the march and immediately through the water. The bridges were all torn down during the war. So that was my first experience with the partisans, and they told me then that I would experience this more often with them."
Bořivoj Sedláček was born on 9 August 1927 in the village of Gudovac in what was then Yugoslavia, in what is now Croatia. His father was Czech and his mother was Russian. During the war, he became a partisan and experienced a lot of bloodsheds. But he said there was no time for fear. Unlike others, his family was lucky, they all survived. After the war, they left their impoverished country for South Moravia and settled in Lednice. At first, he welcomed the political direction our country was taking after the communist coup in February 1948. But the subsequent 1950s brought him great disillusionment. In his opinion, the Communists in his native country were real heroes, but he condemned the actions of the Czechoslovak ones. Surrounded by a caring and loving family, he lived in South Moravia at the time of the interview (2020).
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!
