"The conservationists had fantastic plans for Volary. They have drawn up a concept for the development of Volary, there is a document. When you read it, you feel like you're in a fairy tale. The conservationists saw ahead. So Volary was supposed to be the centre of Šumava, it was supposed to be the central museum of Šumava. All the houses were to be preserved, they were to be part of the museum as an open-air museum. They were going to build hotel facilities, and it's unbelievable, they planned to build a kilometre-long runway for planes and people from abroad would fly there. Moreover, Volary was a very important railway junction at that time, there was still a direct connection to Passau. The concept is from the fifty-sixth year. The conservationists used to go there, they were measuring, but it is a pity that they did not hand over the photo documentation to the National Archives. They have it somewhere at the State Monuments Office in Prague. So they've located them there, mapped them out... And then the correspondence, they went there, the national committee representatives went to Prague for meetings, and of course the committee members, they were all new settlers, so they had no relation to it. That's the Germans' legacy, it has to be demolished. The Germans were moved out, Czechs moved into some of the houses, many of the houses remained empty, what could be stolen was stolen. It was in a terrible state."
"It was a big house, and it was a joinery shop, the house was even built before the First World War. There was a huge attic, I was afraid to go in there as a child. There was stuff in there, or rather such junk, you wouldn't believe it. There were pictures of the Kaiser, President Masaryk, Beneš, Adolf Hitler and even Beneš after the war, unbelievable."
"My parents moved in, when they came to Volary, they moved in too, it was an old abandoned house, they demolished it long ago, in Volary, it was also after the Czechs, it was empty. And they were moving the Germans out of Volary during the whole year 1946. It was on every fifteenth day in months. When you come to Volary from Prachatice, you see the cottages on the right. The Germans built a camp there during the war, it had a military style, and the children, or rather the youth of the German parents were concentrated there when the father was at the front and the mothers, for various reasons, were unable to take care of the children. So it was a kind of a camp basically, they had a kind of paramilitary order there, and then after the war, you see, I can send you a photo, an aerial view, of what it looked like, which not many people know today, even from Volary. It had platforms, long barracks, watchtowers and so on, and then after the war it became a detention camp for the Germans."
Václav Vondrášek was born on 22 March 1946 in Volary. His parents came from Staré Kestřany in the Písek region. His father Václav Vondrášek travelled through Europe with the Kludský family circus during the war, his mother Anna, née Bartoňková, worked in the sanatorium Vráž near Písek. After the war, her parents left for Šumava. In Volary they got an abandoned house from the Czechs who had to leave after Hitler occupied the Czech borderlands. As a child, Václav Vondrášek witnessed the transformation of Volary into a remote border town full of soldiers. He and his friends went through the abandoned houses of the displaced Germans, finding war ammunition and weapons everywhere. Later, in the Pioneer organization, Border Guard soldiers taught them how to shoot and take care of horses. That‘s why he joined the army. After three years at the Engineer Technical School in Bratislava, he joined the army in České Budějovice. Here he lived through the August days of 1968 and the outbreak of civil resistance against the occupiers. After his marriage, he followed his wife to Slovakia, where in the 1970s he studied history at the Military Political Academy in Bratislava. From 1989 until his retirement he taught at the Department of Social Studies of the Military Academy in Brno, later at the University of Defence. His scientific work focused on the Slovak post-war exile. In retirement, he returned to his native Šumava and became an active member of the Volary Club of Czech Tourists. In 2024 he was living in Volary.
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!
