“He would not have had to if... It is not spoken about it enough. During Warsaw Uprising, Red Army on which resistance movement depended that they would help them stopped and stayed on the bank of the Vistula for 63 days on Stalin´s order because Stalin did not need the right-wing resistance movement to win so that there would not be communists. So, he let Warsaw to be reduced to ashes and all resistance members to be killed. And only when it had been completely devastated, the Russians started to move again and marched to Warsaw. If they had done it earlier, they could have saved Auschwitz two months earlier. They might have been there in November and not in January and Ota might not have... There hadn´t had to be transports in 1944 to Auschwitz because Russians... I blame Russians for that. To stand in one place for 63 days! They saw Warsaw burning, collapsing and they did not do anything. It is completely unbelievable. Otherwise, Ota took care of Lilinka in Auschwitz as long as he was there. And then when they transported him to Auschwitz he said: ‘Don´t worry Lilinka, Otoušek will come back to you.‘“
“I went there and returned in approximately ten days. And I still remember how the chairman was annoyed. How we met when I was going to work and we bumped into each other in the corridor. He looked at me and said: ‘Comrade Trojan has come back to us?‘ He thought that I would emigrate that he would not have to remove me from office anymore and that no one would have to save me again; that he would just get rid of me.” - “And did you go with your wife?” - “Yes, with my wife. It was mainly about her. Czechoslovak Business Bank organized it, so we went. It was very nice. The whole night. Well, we were shocked on the boarder in Rozvadov. I was on the boarder for the very first time then. We were standing around an hour in front of the first barrier gate, then we moved on a bit to the main barrier gate and we spent four hours there. There was only our bus and a Škoda 120 car next to us. There was not heavy traffic. When I saw the towers and the soldiers holding assault rifles or machine guns on them and the anti-tank barricades, I don´t know, I realized that we were living in a huge concentration camp. It was very depressing, really depressing.”
“Paradoxically it is interesting that I ended there, in the Research Institute but on the 1st of July I started to work as the head of accounting department in Town Committee of Union for Cooperation with the Army (Svazarm). But I only noticed later that there were many people who had fallen into disgrace. For example, there was a man who had worked as a chief of protocol for president or there was a colonel who had worked in general staff. Everyone of us had been in troubles and other people had had problems as well so eventually we were a group of dissidents in Town Committee of Union for Cooperation with the Army (Svazarm). It was quite interesting. I was the head of accounting department then I became the head of the whole economic section then of the whole economic department because the previous head of the department Ing. Kotlíková left for Central Committee. She supported me, she liked me and protected me. I always said something during a meeting. We had a meeting each month - meeting of economists. I was in charge of ten economists and ten controllers from district committee who somehow were not fond of me. I even helped some of them with closings."
Jindřich Trojan was born on the 21st of December 1942 in Prague. His mum had a long-term disease, his father worked as a clerk and had a low salary but he went to perform several times a week after work because he was a gifted musician and has his orchestra. Jindřich finished primary school, applied for Secondary School of Agriculture and Wine-making but returned to Prague after two months. Jindřich´s father took care of his ill son Míla after Jindřich´s mother´s death and Jindřich started to work in a bank. We gradually worked his way up from an operator to a head of accounting and he attended evening classes and passed the secondary-school leaving exams at Secondary School of Economics. He met his future wife Lili née Ledererová in the bank. She was deported to Terezín Ghetto during the war and she spent there three years and lost two of her three siblings. She recorded her memories of Terezín Ghetto on a video for USC Shoa Foundation. Jindřich later worked as a head of accounting in Research Institute of Economic Planning. He stated during the screenings at the beginning of so-called normalization that the arrival of the Soviet army in 1968 had been aggression and occupation. He had to leave the Institute but he found a job in Town Committee of Union for Cooperation with the Army (Svazarm) where many people with similar fate worked. He worked his way up to the head of economic department and he stayed there for twenty years. Before he retired, he had worked in Prague 13 town hall as the head of audit department for last two years. Jindřich and his wife were founding members of the Civic Democratic Party. He died on August 2023.
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!
