“The gossip had it… I was trying to get some goods for the resistance so was invited to Javoříčko for goods. When I arrived to Bouzov, we heard shots, bangs, detonations and so on, but what we did not know was that Javoříčko was in danger. I went to get a breakfast in Bouzov to Mrs. Nemerádová's, that was a restaurant, and she told me: 'Boy, don't go there! From four in the morning, there is shooting and killing going on. Matters could get really bad for you.' I only had to take away one single heifer and I did not get it done. Mrs. Nemerádová told me yet another thing: 'Go back home and say what is going on in here but don't follow the road. They shot everyone who walked on the road from the castle tower, they could shoot you.' So I did not go that way, I went through Doly. One took an unpaved road between the fields and then across the forest. Towards Doly and then through Kozov and from Kozov to Vranová Lhota and that was moreless it.
And then there was this situation that I came running to Vranová Lhota and Vranová and in Vranová, I announced that there's that situation over there. In Bouzov, I should pick some cattle that was sold there and I should be butchering as usual. And now there were these matters that it was not possible and I did not pick the cattle. So I came home and told the master butcher that the situation is such. From the sixth to the seventh (May of 1945) – on the fifth, it happened in Javoříčko - … on the sixth, the whole German train arrived, those who had been murdering in Javoříčko, to Vranová Lhota, that they would stay lodged there. We had a manor suspicion that the same thing would happen in Vranová Lhota. That German commander of theirs made us all aware that should one single German soldier be hurt, that – at first, he said fifty, then he changed it to ten young people, that he would shoot them.”
“Hejl came to the shop and told the butcher to let me leave. Two German soldiers with guns lead me between them to Hejl’s. Everyone thought they were to shoot me but they did not. Hejl told me which pig to kill. I killed it, butchered it up and handed it to them. They packed it, went to the pub to have some booze, they got on the armoured vehicle and went uphill because the road from Vranova went up the hill. And up on the hill, one went in the direction of Prague, through Městečko Trnávka and Moravská Třebová… And now, when we stayed there like this, someone says: Russians are coming! And one could see them coming from Lípa, that’s from the direction of Kozov, how they go down from that hillock towards us, to Vranová Lhota.
They drove through Vranová Lhota to follow the Germans and they yelled ‚German, where, German, where?!‘ So I was telling them that they are up that hill there. I don’t know how I babbled it. In Russian or something. But the fact is that they took me and one more boy, they … and we drove up the hill. And in the ditch, there lay the armoured vehicle and Germans under, they were trying to repair it and to get it out of there. So we got there, the Red Army soldiers jumped down, they shouted ‘Hände hoch, Hände hoch!‘ They repeated it three or four times. The Germans did not react and started to fire at them. At this point, the Russians stopped to bother and they just shot them all dead. They pulled them out and they told us: ‘Throw them to the ditch and bury them.’ And that was what we did.”
“And so it happened – they lodged them. And in the night from the sixth to the seventh [May 1945] happened the thing in Mitrovice – it was that place where Knoedl and Richter who fought on the German front were from – so the thing happened that the whole Vranová Lhota had to stand in front of the wall across from the school. And machine guns were aimed at them, so that they would shoot them all. And there was a negotiation and he [the commander] immediately ordered to bring the mayor to the square, to shoot him on the spot. The talks started and one German woman pleaded with the German officer that the mayor always cared about them, that he took care and that it would not be fair. So, it was Mrs. Beckerová, the priest, the headmaster. And then, Richter’s wife came running – of that Richter who was at the front – and shouted out that her brother never did anything but that Krejčí a Švec help the resistance. They arrested Krejčí and František Švec and at that point, it was moreless decided.”
Miroslav Stejskal was born on the 22th of August in 1927 in Vranová Lhota, then in the Litovel district. He apprenticed as a butcher. At the end of the war, he dug ditches and had to endure enemy fire. At the very end of WWII, he witnessed executions of his Vranová Lhota neighbours but luckily, major bloodbath did not happen, contrasting with the nearby Javoříčko. Miroslav witnessed the liberation of his village by the Red Army. After having served his compulsory army service, he became a professional and rose through the ranks to become Quartermaster General at the Ministry of Defense. During the night of the 20th August of 1968, he took part in the discussions at the Headquarters General. As an envoy of the President, Ludvík Svoboda, he gave a speech at the extraordinary XIV. Meeting of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. During the normalisation purges, he was demoted from his post. He still served in the army as a comissioned officer but he only held a clerical job.
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!
