"So my father disappeared somewhere, as I say. I know he had a gun hidden in the sofa. And when he disappeared, the gun disappeared. I know that. We didn't go out on the streets much more. The biggest fights were on the Soudní náměstí with the Gestapo, who were pulling from Benešov, and down from Nusle, the hairdressers went against them, and they actually pushed the Germans back a bit, although there was a lot of fighting on Soudní náměstí and up on Zelení liška. And when it was over, my father was in a daze and I picked myself up, and I didn't think anything else of going to where the fighting was on Zelená liška. So that was after the war. There I got stuck in a house - a cellar full of dead bodies! A cellar full of corpses! The Germans, before they fled, they had hidden people in the cellars, and they had sprayed everything like that. There were corpses lying one on top of the other. So I have such bad memories of that."
"We had a group of guys there and we would go out on Saturdays. And then when it started... and we took the train from Spořilov. There used to be a stop at Spořilov, now it's been restored. So there was a stop there then. And we always rode in the last carriage on the platform. Those were the old carriages, so that's where we always sat. We couldn't go further, we could only go to Vrané, because it was blocked. There were tunnels there, and the Germans had some production in those tunnels. So we went to Vrané and there was no change, the train didn't continue along the Sázava, but to Dobříš. The first station was Měchenice, and we got off there and followed the river to Davle. After Davle we crossed the bridge and went back along the right bank."
"I have fond memories of Masaryk. Mostly it was passed on from people to me as a little boy. And everyone adored him. Well, of course, I always joined in. And I was encouraged to do that at home, too. I really appreciated Masaryk. In later years, when I learned more about him, but more from some magazines or books, because I wasn't that interested in those years. Dad Masaryk was, everybody adores him and that's it. And he was president - a done deal."
Miroslav Vlasák was born on 6 August 1929 in Prague. His father Čeněk Vlasák was a war invalid from World War I, his mother Anna was a housewife. During World War II he was a member of the illegal scout troop Čtyřiačtyřicítka. He started his apprenticeship at the Waldes company in Vršovice, where he experienced an air raid on Prague on 14 February 1945. In May 1945, he witnessed the fighting that took place on soudní náměstí in Prague‘s Pankrác. His father, who took part in the Prague Uprising, never returned home. After February 1948, as part of Gottwald‘s youth, he joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, then completed a workers‘ course and, as an „ádékář,“ graduated from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague. He then spent his entire life working as the head of a development center at the Ministry of Transport. After August 1968, he left the Communist Party, but he retained his managerial position until 1989, when he retired. In 2024, he lived in Prague.
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!
