"There was a Gipsy among us. One day he got up and went to the bathroom. When he came back he said: ´We won’t have to work today, the war is over.´ we asked him how did he know that? And he said: ´I’m telling you.´ so we didn’t go to work. Later on some woman came to us and said: ´Take a rest today, the war is over. You will continue with the work later.´"
„I worked in the factory work shop. There was also a head vet, a horse expert. Once he brought two Czechs in the work shop and said: ´Look, Vaclav Janovich, I brought these men here, they want to ask you a couple of things, and so tell them what you know. And then he left. It was only me and they left there. They placed a recorder on my work table and started to record. I was worried that I might say something regrettable and become a state enemy. So I didn’t say anything. I shortly answered what they asked for, but I didn’t add anything to it. They went to the vet saying: ´Who is he? He don’t want to talk to us...´So he took them to my father who told they everything they wanted to hear, he sang songs for them and they left happy. I was afraid to say something. I told them about my first grade teacher Mr. Peter Jilemnicky who got arrested for being a people’s enemy. They told me that he wasn’t an enemy, but a writer like our Maxim Gorky."
„I was in one room, where other Czechs returning from the concentration camp were arriving. The Czechoslovakia was in disagreement with the Soviet Union in 1938. They sent many people into concentration camps. Is something going to happen to me for saying this?"
Go ahead.
"The people who came back from the camps were elderly, they wouldn’t walk anymore. I used to ask them: And how about you, you can’t serve the army anymore? And they replied: We wanted to get free from the concentration camp and if the army will liberate Czechoslovakia we will be able to return home sooner.´ Do you understand? That’s how it was."
"And then the ear specialist came in at midnight. He was a Czech. He took me to school, turned the light on and looked into my ear. Then he told me to go back to sleep and in the morning I should come to the headquarters. I came there early in the morning, the office was still closed. There was a bulletin board at the corner of the hall about the war running. So i read that while I waited. I knew how to read in Czech back then, but I forgot that already. The office door opened and some man called: ´Mr. Svec, where are you? ´ And I told him I was there reading the board. He told me to sit on the window, so I did. Then he asked me: ´Why do you want to go home? Stay here with us. And I replied: ´No, I will go.´"
"I went to Czech school in the first grade. My teacher was Peter Jilemnicky. The next year they arrested him. He used to live right next to the school. They built a big new house where the school was. Mathew lived in the teacher’s apartment. He used to play violin and taught us some songs like e.g. ´When I served the army the first summer...´, or ´I had this nice falcon and he flew away from me...´ I forgot the rest."
Václav Janovič Švec was born in 1917 in Varvarovka near by Anapa in USSR. He remembers his Czech teacher Peter Jilemnicky, who taught in Varvarovka during the 30´s. Before Second World War he was in Army in The Far East, but because of his medical problems (he suffered an ear illness) he has been dismissed from the army. For the same reason he could not become the soldier of Czechoslovak army. During the Second World War he served to non-combat forces in south of Russia, Belarus and surrounding of Saint Petersburg town. He was one of the last Czech inhabitants of former Czech village Varvarovka in the northern Caucasus, died in 2012.
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!
