“‘Stop, stop!‘ I did not do anything. He was walking towards me; I was walking away, and he said: ‘Stop!‘ And when he was getting closer, I saw that he had a gun and started running. He started shooting. Two, three… But I did not care. There was a queue of travellers, they caught me without problems. I did not resist.”
“I remember that we had a severe drought in 1947. We did not even harvest what we sowed. Moreover, everything was ruined and eaten by the cattle. We had a cow after the [displaced] Germans, I do not know if we had a calf, I cannot remember. However, there was the cow and we had to find some fodder for it. But the barns had been robbed and there was nothing in the fields. Everything had been eaten down. Everything had been trampled by the herd which Russians had and we could not harvest anything. It was extreme poverty.”
“There were interrogations day and night. They were rough. They woke you up, you were still sleepy and now: ‘Tell us!‘ (They hit you) from the left, right, and another side, and now: ‘Tell us!‘ And if you did not (tell them), they started to beat you. It was not important that there was blood. It was common. Nobody was taken aback by it. The cleaner cleaned it and it started again.”
“Solitary confinement was there. Four bare walls, there was nothing on them. There was no chair, and you could not sit on the floor – (you had to) walk. They had a peephole there and checked on me if I did not make it easier for me. Fatigue, they wanted to make you tired. It was torment.”
Václav Tymočko was born on 12 April 1928 in Trenčín. Shortly after his birth, he was placed in an orphanage because of the difficult family situation, and he grew up there until he was eight. He later – in the mid-1930s – started to live with his aunt Rozárie Bělotová in Horní Lideč in the area of Vsetín where he finished elementary school. During the war, he served with the farmers on farms in the area of Zlín. After the war, he and his “newly found” parents Františka and Václav settled on a farm of the displaced Sudeten Germans in Smolín in the area of Brno. When the communists confiscated the farm from the family in 1950, Václav decided to cross the borders to the west illegally. However, he was not successful, and he spent the following year in a labour camp in Svatý Jan pod Skalou. Shortly after his release around 1951, he committed another offence. Together with the criminally prosecuted Miroslav Čermák - whom he was hiding at home - they set fire to the stacks. He spent ten years in prison from the imposed twelve-year sentence, he was released on amnesty in 1960. He then settled in Brno where he passed a welding course and worked as a welder until his retirement. At the time of recording the interview (2021), Václav Tymočko lived in a retirement home in Rajhrad. He died on May 9, 2024.
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!
