Stanislav Groh

* 1946

  • “Emil was rumoured to really love beer. I heard countless stories about him from friends who knew him. I said: ‘Hi Emil, we’ve met – I used to go to your races in Brandýs.’ He said: ‘Who are you? Are you an émigré? I’m not allowed to speak to émigrés.’ I said: ‘Don’t worry, Emil, I’ll be knocking on the gate in Rozvadov on Sunday for them to let me back. I have children back there. Look, I was given these vouchers. Let’s have a beer!’ It was this little paper square with ‘ein Bier’ written on it. We had a cold one, and then they called him back to the stage. He spoke excellent German, and so he told the audience the story of the Zwei Zitronen.”

  • “I received an official draft invitation; we used to go get drafted one year before joining for the actual service. I was passing by the tables where officers and medical doctors were sitting. I was wearing just red boxer shorts; other than that, I was naked. There were no problems; I kept saying: ‘The athletic team officials told me they had arranged for me to join the Rudá hvězda [Red Star military sports team].’ Then I approached the political leader; he was one Major Haďáry, stationed here, and he spoke Czech-Slovak-Hungarian. He said: ‘Ah, Groh Stanislav, your credentials don’t look good. Your father owned twenty hectares.’ I said: ‘I have arrangements in place to join the military sports team; the sports team officials arranged it.’ – ‘This is out of the question politically. We have assigned you to a tank unit in Milovice, and the tank commander will keep an eye on you, politics-wise. Dismiss!’ Then he read me some credentials from the community of Štikov where I didn’t even live. It was written in ancient Czech; it must have been written by some old geezer farmer. It didn’t even mention hectares but ancient Czech land measures such as ‘korec’ and so on. That was the first time in my life when I heard how many cows, horses and everything else we used to have.”

  • “He came back home from a meeting crying. Actually, he succeeded to sell one horse before the collectivisation, and we kept Minda the brood mare. Then the first order arrived – surrender your cows to the cow house – but the communists hadn’t built the cow house. There was Mr Schnabel, a Jewish factory owner who had fled Hitler to England. When he came back, they didn’t allow him to manage anything. He also had a farm on the outskirts of Nová Paka with room for about 30 cattle. That’s where they took our cows. Dad was not allowed to keep Minda the horse at home, to make sure he did not conduct business with it. There is a famed brewery in Nová Paka, and its stables were in good condition. Breweries used to have their own horses to cart beer to pubs, but they replaced them with lorries in the 1950s. Our mare was in stable there; maybe there were also other horses they took from other farmers. My dad loved the horse, and so he made arrangements with the cooperative – which became a state farm operation later on – and was allowed to take care of his horse because he just loved it. He would go there twice a day and tended the horse.”

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    Vrchlabí, 01.03.2023

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As a kulak’s son, he was forbidden to study. The CPC even impaired his sports opportunities

Stanislav Groh at a race on 15 February 1976. This was his first racing event after returning from hospital where he was treated for pneumonia
Stanislav Groh at a race on 15 February 1976. This was his first racing event after returning from hospital where he was treated for pneumonia
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Stanislav Groh wars born in Štikov near Nová Paka on 14 February 1946 and had two younger sisters. His father operated a farm of 20 hectares and owned a sand quarry and forests. His mother was a seamstress and model. His father resisted joining the farming cooperative until 1966. They took their horses and cows away; still, they were forced to deliver mandatory supplies and their living was miserable. The communists forbade the witness to study at a high school and he was forced to farmwork from 1961 on. He was a member of the athletic club in Nová Paka and competed in running and both cross-country and downhill skiing. He married Ludmila Štětková in 1967; her father Otokar Štětka was the chief of the mountain rescue service (horská služba) in Krkonoše and his relatives lived in the USA. The witness and his wife had daughter Michaela. Following his military service, the witness worked at a Ministry of the Interior holiday resort in 1967 and then, for 40 years from 1968 on, at the Škoda plant in Vrchlabí. He wrote anti-occupation messages after 1968. He remarried in the 1980s and had three children with wife Jaroslava. In 1989 he managed to get to Germany and ran a marathon race in Frankfurt where he met Emil Zátopek. He took part in protests in Vrchlabí and Dvůr Králové nad Labem in 1989. He was living in Vrchlabí in 2023.