Miroslav Hůla

* 1933

  • "The Russian soldiers were looking for devotchkas and they also broke into our house because they noticed that my aunt and her daughters and my mother were sitting in the yard on Sunday afternoon. They thought they'd get some... so they ambushed us in the house. There was a big fuss about them looking for devotchkas. Meanwhile, they [the women] were hiding there at my aunt's, but luckily some kind of officer barged in and dispersed them. He pulled out a gun and chased them out of the house. That was an unpleasant memory."

  • "By that time, the print shop had been cleaned out, nothing was going on there. The printing machines remained there, but he [the soldier] had seized a bicycle somewhere, or someone had given it to him, and he wanted to have it sent to Russia. Somehow, we argued, well, the Slavic language... with the help of our hands we made ourselves understood. I wasn't there, but my mother told me. He brought a bicycle there, and if he could hide it, until he could send the mail, the package, to Russia. They talked about all sorts of things and he asked if the print shop and the house were hers, like mom's. He was thinking and saying the future vision: that [mom] would suffer a lot before she loses everything. That's what it sounded like, his assessment of the situation, where this republic of ours might end up after that."

  • "When the printer closed down and the machines were scrapped, all that was left was that they sent the family money for the iron as compensation. The result was that my mother went and bought a chain of sausages with the money and we ate those in one dinner. That was the end of the whole printing business. This is how my mother presented it: Now you've spent the printer on food!'"

  • "Someone has figured out that one printer is unnecessary in Humpolec and there doesn't have to be any. The broke up the machines, they were collected and the Type metal that could be used was taken to a printing plant in Havlíčkův Brod. Dad didn't even go to the printing house in [Havlíčkův] Brod anymore, they gave him a job at a metal factory, he was a kind of clerk and did all kinds of things: taking orders, issuing invoices and other things. He went there for about a year or two and the wrongs or maybe something else... he just lost his mind and he kicked the bucket. My dad wasn't home for about three days, my brother was already in the military service, so my mom borrowed my brother's motorcycle and we went to find my dad to see if he had gone to see my brother in the service. We looked for him and three days later they found him hanging in Ledeč nad Sázavou at an outlook. My mother put it together again, saying that they had been there on a Sokol trip and that he liked it there."

  • "After that apprenticeship, we had... my grandmother had a little stationery store or a bookstore. But my grandmother was getting old and I simply was to to finish it. But the private business was being liquidated in those days, I think, also in the way that just those shopkeepers weren't getting any goods. That is, they sold what was on the shelves, and so you just normally had to close down and go work somewhere. That's what happened to me. So, in the meantime, they nationalized my father's print shop, and there was a shop next to that. It was closed down, the goods were taken to a shed somewhere behind the house, then they were put into waste, because there was nowhere to put them. And things like that. Due to this, I had to start looking for a job."

  • "I'm already a pretty good witness, I'll be 86 years old in the autumn. So, I still remember something, as they say, from the First Republic. I still remember the last two years of the war, I remember the Germans here. During the war I started going to school, it was called first grade then, an evangelical school. So, I got to those final years. I could tell you it wasn't any easier during the war either. As boys and as pupils... we were more or less fine in those days. Because the Germans gradually took over the schools here and made barracks out of it, and again we had to study only in some auxiliary premises, like the canteen of a factory. The cantor came once a week and gave us some homework for the next week, and that was the end of the school. After the war, things started to get kind of normal. It was practically by 1948, when I was about to finish regular schooling, that Victorious February, as it's called today, came. It started so gradually, that was when I was supposed to go into apprenticeship, I was supposed to apprentice myself maybe with my parents because my dad had a printing press, and I was supposed to start as a printer of some sort. But there were all sorts of restrictions already, so that the children of these parents couldn't do what the parents wanted to them do, or what the children wanted to do. So, I didn't get to do that. Eventually, my parents sort of arranged it with somebody, so I was able to train as a sales consultant."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Humpolec, 15.05.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 02:01:45
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
  • 2

    Jihlava, 08.04.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:55:06
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

The communists nationalized our printing press, destroyed the machines, and father hung himself

Miroslav Hůla in 2019
Miroslav Hůla in 2019
zdroj: Archiv Miroslava Hůla

Miroslav Hůla was born on 9 September 1933 in Humpolec into a family of tradesmen. His grandfather owned a printing house there. Over time, it was taken over by his father Vladimír, who later built a new business premises. The witness entered the first class of the Protestant primary school and attended it during the World War II. Shortly before the liberation, in the spring of 1945, the Hůla family had to close the printing house and the witness’s father was forced to work in the local warehouses. After the liberation, the printing house was put back into operation. He was involved in the post-war restoration of Junák and also attended Sokol. After the communist takeover in 1948, the printing house was nationalized. Neither the witness nor his older brother was allowed to study to become a printer and both trained as sales consultants. In addition, the elder brother did compulsory military service in the Technical auxiliary battalion. The printing presses were scrapped and the printing house finally closed in 1952. Immediately afterwards the father of the witness took his own life. Due to the redevelopment of the city centre, the printing house was demolished in the second half of the 1960s. After 1989, the family was financially compensated in restitution proceedings. From 1966 to 1994, Miroslav served as a fire inspector, which he followed up with a private career as a fire safety technician. At the time of recording, he lived in Humpolec (April 2022).