"And the Russians came. With cars, vehicles, they were all slant-eyed. I went to the director with fears, that they had not let them take on water in the agricultural co-operative. Because they lived somewhere behind Klecany in a field in a glade. There the Russians made their camp. Close-by was Odolena Voda and the airport and the Soviets landed there. Tanks and cars drove around the surrounding villages. And when they camped in Klecany, we heard, how they shot, how the bullets flew above our heads. They shot rabbits there, because they were hungry. I went to the director and asked him, what was to be done, if they came and would want to go inside the school, to sleep or for water. And he said that I should not let anyone in, to lock up, put chains on the gates... It ended up that they finally disappeared from Klecany and dispersed."
"...They heard that harmonica play, and so the drunk Russians came to us, banged on the dooor - and said: 'Davaj garmoshka [harmonica].' Father with grandfather stopped him, so that he could not take the harmonica. Father started to tussle wiith him. It was the summer, the window was open, in front of us was the gendarmerie station. My grandpa jumped up on the window and that Russians took out his gun and shot. He shot grandpa in the head. He fell out of the window. At the police station they heard the shot and so immediately ran out. A Czech gendarme and the Russian officer, who commanded the Soviet company. They came, arrested the two drunk Russians, they drove off grandpa to Teplice to the hospital and shortly after he died."
"In the year 1962 the so-called Cuban crisis took place. I entered my mandatory military service 16. 10. 1962, on my birthday. Then in November the Cuban crisis took place. It was terrible. We were not trained, we slept in our military uniforms, emergency cars were lined up in the plaza. We took turns, and so some slept in those cars... it was already November and it was cold, some slept in platoons on the beds, on the simple beds, but we could only take off our shoes - the so-called half-liters - and could have our belts loosened. But otherwise we had to wear our uniforms. We had to have our submachine guns hung on the bed and boots ready - to only jump into them. And it endured like this for the entire length of the Cuban crisis. We had not yet been trained."
Vlastimil Šindelář was born on the 16th of October 1943 in Klecany by Prague to the worker family of Adolf and Zdeňka Šindelář. His father was trained as a bricklayer and electrician and his mother was a shopkeeper. Shortly after the liberation in the year 1945 the family, together with the mother‘s parents Bedřich and Anna Jirkovský, the aunt, and her blind son, moved into a house in Velemín u Lovosic, which was left empty after the exiled Germans. Not long after moving in, while protecting his blind grandson, the grandfather Bedřich was shot by two drunk Soviet soldiers. After the tragedy the Šindelář family moved back to Klecany. This event affected the thinking of the entire family. Vlastimil grew up in opposition towards the Soviets and communists. He was not accepted to study his desired career of automechanic, despite attending primary school with distinction, and only got to choose from very limited options. He studied to become an electrician in Spolana Neratovice. Vlastimil Šindelář describes his life in Klecany during the totalitarian times, where, during the fifties, collectivization took place, remembers his basic military service in the year 1962 during the time of the Caribbean crisis, and then also the invasion of the Warsaw Pact armies. The Velvet Revolution of 1989 took place when he was an employee of the business Technometra Praha. He was a member of a strike committee; he remembers how, for example, the communists would destroy cadre materials. Vlastimil Šindelář also lived for some time in Roudnice nad Labem, now lives in Prague. He is three tiems married and has two children.
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!
