Ladislav Hladík

* 1927

  • "So nach ... to Šlapanice to see a doctor, so they went there and went to complain that they were sick, and do you know what the doctor told them? 'You Czechs, you gorge on chalk and drink gasoline! Out! Out! Our people are dying in line, so can you! 'And that's how he drove them out. "

  • "The soldier who was guarding us came closer and said, 'I can see who works and who doesn´t, and who doesn´t, I write it down and they get six points and a discipline camp!'"

  • "The first thing the Germans did when they came here on March 17 was that they mostly accommodated here in a hotel, and so on ... they left the school aside. At the same time, those who were in the hotel went there for food. They were mostly officers, and now our people, such young people, used to go there. And they were sitting there at a table playing cards, and German officers were listening to Goebbels's speech, the propaganda minister. As they were listening, whereas it disturbed these Czech young men. So they went to turn the radio down. Of course, the officers were upset and went to him, grabbed him by the collar, led him out of the hotel in the square and kicked him in the ass ... and he ran away, and when the others, about three, saw it, they ran away too. "

  • "The dispatcher from Řečkovice, he was a million-dollar guy who stopped the train for us, but when I was standing by the train, I thought: If I don't get home now, maybe never. When I saw the situation there, the bombing, how the inhabitants fled from Brno before the raids ... "

  • "And we dug such winding alleys from the brickyard to carry the munitions from the brickyard, and as we found out, the brickyard was a warehouse full of ammunition. We were very scared of it, because when the planes flew there, the Germans were basically sitting on the cannons and aiming, but they did not fire, they were probably afraid that if they fired, they would bomb it. That would be terrible for us, because if they bombed the brickyard, no one would find us. "

  • "German soldiers began to appear there, not yellow-brown ones, and they wore masks. It was weird for us. They closed all the windows there, and then we learned that they were closing it and filling it with some unknown gas, that they were gassing it, leaving us lying outside for about half an hour or maybe three-quarters of an hour. Then they opened the windows, ran there in masks, and then chased us to school. Luckily, I got a room after nurses and there was already a nice bed, a blanket and so on, I had a nice one. Some got to those normal rooms. When we were there, we saw that there were 'Fleckfieber' signs on the toilet doors and everywhere, which we found out that 'Fleckfieber' was typhus. "

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Přibyslav, 14.11.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 02:37:15
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Přibyslav, 27.11.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 50:12
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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Difficult life of a trencher

Ladislav Hladík at the age of eighteen (1945). That same year, he received a call-up papers to start fortification work
Ladislav Hladík at the age of eighteen (1945). That same year, he received a call-up papers to start fortification work
zdroj: Archive of Ladislav Hladík

Ladislav Hladík was born in Dobrá u Přibyslavi in May 1927, where he finished a municipal school and embarked on apprenticeship. At the end of the was, at the beginning of February 1945, he was called to fortification work in Moravia, where he worked as a trencher in Podolí and later in Černá Pole near Brno. Together with the others, he escaped from Brno suburb of Řečkovice and returned home by train on 21st April 1945 with German emigrants. After 1946, he left for Jablonec nad Nisou, where he got married. At Tesla company, he contributed to the automation of operations. From 1956 till 1987, he joined Agrostroj in Přibyslav, where he later worked as the head of mechanical and electrical maintenance. From the age of twelve to the present, he has been involved in photography and has recorded many significant historical moments in Přibyslav. He participated in activities of the local amateur theatre and in 2014, he received the town award. At the time of filming, he lived in Přibyslav (2019).