Miroslav Surovec

* 1934

  • “We used to go to swim to the Ostravice River in one place which was called Na Dvanáctce, and there was a deep place dug up by a dredger, and while Ostravice is normally quite shallow, this place was deep enough that we could even jump into water head first there from that concrete embankment. I was there with one other boy and boys from Hitlerjugend came there with their leader; they came for a swim as well. At first he said something to us, but naturally we didn’t understand them, but from their gesticulation it was obvious that they wanted us to get out of there. We were not too keen on that, and he thus issued an order, and those kids dipped their towels in water and they started beating us with them… Well, they gave us a threshing and we had to get out of there [laughing].”

  • “The political screening of non-Party members then took place. There was the woman who was the school principal and two old geezers from the community committee. They would be now even younger than I am now [laughing]. The community committee was an institution which made decisions about all kinds of things – whether somebody’s son would be allowed to study a secondary school... At that time we were told to fill out a questionnaire of several pages, and on the last blank page we had to write in our own words how important it was for us that we were liberated again [by the Russians]. I refused, and so they called me in, and I almost thought it was funny, because when they called me one of the members of the committee addressed me: ‘So, comrade, start speaking,’ and I didn’t react to it [laughing]. He then repeated it. ‘I don’t understand you.’ He said to me: ‘So, read what you wrote as this confession of yours.’ The communists called it a confession… And since he provoked the answer like that, I replied to him: ‘Wait, only people who have sinned have to make a confession of their sins, but I have not sinned in any way, and I have no confession to make here.’ He jumped out, his face turned red – [he said] that I if a had not brought him the questionnaire filled out within twenty minutes, I would face the consequences, and I, obviously, didn’t bring him anything.”

  • “That day, it was on May 2, 1945, dad was standing by the wicket in front of our house and a convoy of German horse-drawn wagons and horses had been passing by already for several days continuously, and they were already retreating. I was looking at them from the window, and suddenly two of them ran there. They arrived to the Virgin Mary church with a tank, but it was just a surveying tank… The two Soviets ran down and what is interesting – and I saw it – each of them carried a submachine gun over his shoulder. They ran in there and fired into the transport. The horses startled, some remained lying on the ground, and as the convoy was passing down the Revolution Street, there was probably some of their sentry, and they blasted the bridge – it was the old bridge, now there is the new bridge, by ‘Kolo.’ They let the bridge explode even with their own people on it.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Morávka, 15.03.2014

    (audio)
    délka: 01:43:18
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu A Century of Boy Scouts
  • 2

    Morávka, 09.07.2015

    (audio)
    délka: 09:04
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu A Century of Boy Scouts
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

As I was reciting my Boy Scout oath, my voice was trembling and I still keep the oath badge even today

Miroslav Surovec-Ježek
Miroslav Surovec-Ježek
zdroj: fotoalbum Jiřího Pavlicy

Miroslav Surovec, Ježek („Hedgehog“) by his Boy Scout nickname, was born June 20, 1934. His father was a blacksmith. Miroslav grew up at the State Farm in Frýdek. After the war he joined the Boy Scouts, he was a Cub Scout in the troop of brother Lipovčan. He experienced his first Scout camp in Komorní Lhotka, and until 1949 he was a Boy Scout in the 2nd troop in Frýdek. After the war the family began with construction of their house, but the subsequent currency reform devaluated their savings. Miroslav refused to agree with the Soviet invasion after August 1968 and as a consequence he had to leave his teaching job and instead work in a Unified Agricultural Cooperative, because as a non-Party member he had not passed an assessment by a screening committee. After some time he was allowed to start working as a teacher in the vocational school of forestry in Bílá. However, this entailed having to commute to work every day through mountainous terrain, and Miroslav thus rode a motorcycle in summer and he went on skis in winter. In 1979 he returned to the secondary technical school where he then continued teaching until his retirement. The house they had so painstakingly built became demolished when it had to make way for a prefabricated housing estate. He and his father therefore purchased a lodge in Morávka, where he still lives now and where he tends to a small farm and takes care of horses. The local people began to call the place „Surovec‘s Place.“