František Teplý

“I got a pretty serious moral blow in 1957 when they declared that in a couple of hours a Soviet missile would take a satellite into orbit. I didn’t believe it and took it for more Bolshevik propaganda – you know, the usual stuff. At takeoff, a part of the rocket was supposed to be visible due to the glow, so they brought this to our attention. They said it will shine at about five o‘clock in the afternoon. So we watched it, the whole crowd stood in the yard – and it really took off. It was a great disappointment for me that the Russians were already so far.”

“On Monday, 7th May, 1945, we were working as usually and around 11:00 a.m. my dad shouted at me: ‘bring the camera, bring the camera’! The Navrátil and the Svěrák families were returning from their hideouts. They were communists and somebody warned them that an SS commando group was on the way to Roveň and that it was about to burn down the village and massacre the inhabitants. The communists of Roveň passed the message among them and kept it for themselves. They hid in their makeshift hideouts and effectively left the other inhabitants to be massacred. My mother went to tell the news about their return to our neighbor, Horáková, who stood by the door when Chvojka – who was a tailor and the chief communist in the village – was passing by her house pushing a bicycle that was loaded with the bags they had with them in the hideout. She asked him: ‘So Chvojka, were you hiding as well’? He didn’t say anything in response and just hurriedly walked on. Four years later the communists took their estate and moved them to the borderlands. This Chvojka was the chairman of the local committee and this is how he took his revenge on them.”

“We drove to the Příbram train station. It was already at a time when they were releasing people from jail. They took us to the station and in ten minutes, the train arrived. We boarded it and went away. I got on the train at about two o’ clock that night. My train went to Prague. But I couldn't believe it. I thought ... as did the Germans when they transported people to the concentration camps ... they might as well take us to Siberia. So I immediately got out of the train and ran away. I was hiding in the bushes all night long and in the morning, trains were arriving and departing, cars were bringing prisoners, there were no dogs ... nothing like that. So when dawn came, I crossed the tracks and ran into town. I went to Svatá Hora to thank Virgin Mary for my survival. There I attended the first mass and then I returned back to the city. I saw some school children and they seemed unbelievable to me – such little people. I hadn’t seen such small people for almost six years.”

“I once used to know a pretty nice teacher and we told ourselves that we’d marry. About two hours later I was picked up by the secret police and I’ve never seen this girl again, neither have I ever again heard of her.”

“Then in the eighties, for whatever reason they had mercy with me and allowed me to study. I passed the appropriate exams and obtained a PuDr degree. From this point on I was able to get jobs that were adequate for that degree. If you do not remember exactly what a PuDr means – it basically means a railway worker (“Posunovač U DRahy”). I worked as a railway worker until my retirement.”