„It was quite calm, no tragedy. We sat the way we sit together now. The radio played and around two or three in the afternoon I came back from Olomouc gymnasium. We were just sitting and talking and I asked my father to turn on a radio. He said there was nothing on. Finally he did and the sound went: ,Bum, bum, bum.‘ The well-known signal. Then someone said to stay tuned to an important message. So we were all excited but would not think of anything bad. I was around five p.m. and the radio broadcasted the meeting in Munich just finished with participation of certain politicians, and we agreed to give up border regions inhabited by Germans and we should leave it in about three days. That was in the evening. So we looked at each other and my father asked what I think. I responded, we should not stay amongst Germans, but where would we go. No one knew where to go. There was a certain tension, but I didn’t feel stressed but simply solving the situation. No panic, nothing.“
„The Czechs were celebrating the presidential birthday on 28 October and so on. It was not just like hanging a flag and remember. We marched with the music and the whole parade. In every window lampions were shining. Those were our, that is Czech celebrations. But there were never any conflicts, I mean only when someone got a bit wilder. And the someone like that would always be from the German sides. From the social democracy and the other party, who was not yet Henlein´s, but they were for the German part. And all Germans had to celebrate also all the feast and the major had to have a speech at 28 October to feel we are still the Czechoslovakia.“
„Another order to Austria in Wiener Neustadt. I got out of it by a sheer accident. My daddy had an impediment of digestive organs and his X-ray was labeled Alois Hovadík, so we agreed I´d show it as my documentation. And I took it to the jury and found an acquaintance there, so all was just fine.“
Doc. dr. Alois Hovadík, CSc., was born on August 24, 1921 in Fryšták. He lived in Šternberk as a child, where his father owned a lathe company since 1924. At the beginning of October 1938, shortly before occupation of his town by Wehrmacht troops, the family left Šternberk immediately and moved to Olomouc. Alois Hovadík has several memories from the war; in march 1939 he was a Jewish synagogue on fire or was almost shot by aircraft bullet during the air battle above Haná in December 1944. He twice managed to escape total deployment. In 1951 he successfully graduated from microbiology studies at medical faculty of the Palackého University. In 1953 his father was pushed to give over his workshop to a communal company Olomouc. As former freeholder his parents then retired with a very small pension fee. Alois Hovadík related his working life to the Research Institute of Vegetable Growing and Breeding Olomouc. He worked there since 1950s until he retired. Despite having problems due to his class origin and never joined the communist party, he was rather successful at work. He was the first docent in the institute, he has a title of candidatus scientiarum, published hundreds of expert articles on development of greengrocery in prestigious magazines also in former Eastern Germany and the Great Britain, wrote hundreds of essays and discovered a new pathogenic bacteria. Today he still lives in Olomouc.
In the turnery of Alois Hovadík in Šternberk in around 1935. On left the house and workshop owner, Alois Hovadík, with his eight employees (brothers Dostál, Plachý, Tomášek, Ostravský...)
In the turnery of Alois Hovadík in Šternberk in around 1935. On left the house and workshop owner, Alois Hovadík, with his eight employees (brothers Dostál, Plachý, Tomášek, Ostravský...)
Dr. Miloslav Staněk, CSc., Ing. Miroslav Smotlacha, Doc
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