Dušan Straňák

* 1926

  • “They put up those trucks there – the police was simply armed. They pushed us protesters with their assault rifles and with their bodies, using shields. A condition for the demonstration to be held was that we’d keep order, not causing chaos or violence. And we stuck to that. I don’t even remember if statements were shouted or not. But I personally overheard the negotiation in Nerudova street about sending a delegation to president Beneš. And then the real violence broke out. They opened fire – I don’t know if it was a warning shot – and began beating the protesters with their rifles. They didn’t even spare girls and women. They started the arrests, putting handcuffs on the more aggressive and outspoken protesters. The crowd began to pull back, confronted with such violence and then it dispersed at Malá Strana.”

  • “Rather soon they organized us young men to help the Russians build a wooden provisional bridge over the Thaya river instead of the one blown up by the Germans. The Russians needed to transport heavy machinery to conquer Vienna. So we went to help on foot, all the way to Břeclav. And there we found trenches all around lined with blackened corpses – probably burnt with flame throwers or what killed those poor people. It was an appalling sight. For about a week I helped build the bridge there. Small German airplanes, so-called bumblebees bombed us there. They flew over, dropping bombs. But nothing bad had happened. There was a burnt-out sugar factory there with caramelized sugar reserves. There were full mountains of sugar. Like glass mountains. One could lick it.”

  • “We were only liberated by early April. I don’t know where this Malinovsky’s army had come from. There was a chateau – a small fort. The Germans had occupied and defended it. It had deep cellars so everyone gathered in there and they literally fought for this chateau. Machine guns were thundering above our heads and we thought to see only a pile of rubble when we get out. We were surprised not to. The Red Army had taken them by surprise. As if some indigenous peoples they had crawled through some valley of the Trkmanka river and caught the Germans off guard. They rapidly jumped on their trucks and drove away. I think eventually they were captured anyhow. The Red Army overran it rapidly. And what we only saw then... Torn-up wires at the village square, inflated horses laying upside down, corpses everywhere.”

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    Hroznová ul., Praha , 24.02.2016

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    délka: 02:14:17
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Totalitarianism is evil which destroyed people morally and entangled them into its web

Dušan Straňák, 40. léta
Dušan Straňák, 40. léta
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Dušan Straňák was born on 19 August 1926 in Brno. He grew up in Velké Pavlovice where his father managed a state farm. In 1945 he witnessed the liberation of southern Moravia by the Soviet army. After the war he moved to Prague and started studying Faculty of Law at Charles University. On 25 February 1948 he took part in a student march through Prague, voicing support to president Edvard Beneš and protesting against the communist putsch. He also witnessed the march being broken up by the police. In 1950 he graduated from the faculty and stayed there as an assistant professor. He was later fired for his vocal discontent with the communist regime. Up until retirement he then worked in the Industrial Publishing House in Prague.