Václav Hušák

* 1944

  • "I remember 1964 when my colleague and I were tasked with breaking into a village guarded by the People's Militia and the State Security and destroying the transformer and the office of chairman of the National Committee. The village was surrounded by low-lying vegetation. And so, the only way to get to the village unnoticed was through the bed of a small stream that flowed out of the forest, there was about knee-deep water, banks overgrown with trees and shrubs. We got into the stream and we went bent over in a riverbed more or less all the time. It led us to the center of the village. We broke into the local national committee. We tied the chairman to his chair, and put a gag into his mouth. Outside, we loaded charges of Trinitrotoluene explosive at a local transformer station and detonated it. An orange cloud rolled over the village and we ran back into the stream bed and quickly back into the woods. We also saw how the patrols, after seeing the smoke rising above the village, quickly ran into the village. And we were already secretly moving along the riverbed, until we hid in the forest. We announced through the radio that the task was completed and we were going back to the military base."

  • "In the fourth grade, in 1954, we rehearsed an assembly with cubes for the Spartakiad. That's why we all had to make a training cube measuring about 25 x 25 centimeters. It was made in many different ways at home, preferably from harder cardboard. However, there was a lack of it at the time, and so it was made from everything that was possible. I remember that one student had a cube made of plyboard, it was very heavy and dangerous, especially when we threw it."

  • "Always on May Day on Labor Day, as pioneers we went to a parade that took place in larger cities. We walked to Nový Strašecí, eight kilometers away. It was quite difficult for us small children to walk such a distance. We usually got back by bus then. We wore a white shirt, pioneer scarves tied around our necks, short or long trousers and a belt with a metal buckle, on which "Always ready for work and defense of the homeland" was inscribed. In one hand we had a small Czechoslovak flag and in the other red with a yellow sickle and a hammer and a star of the Soviet Union. We always waved happily with them in the procession and were glad that it was over."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Ostrava, 30.10.2013

    (audio)
    délka: 01:05:43
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Soutěž Příběhy 20. století
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I became a miner voluntarily

Václav when he was 18 years old
Václav when he was 18 years old
zdroj: archive of the witness

Vladimír Hušák was born on September 1, 1944 in a small farmstead Ovčín near the town Smečno in the Central Bohemia. After the war, his father left to work for the Czechoslovak State Railways as a shunter, and the family got an apartment directly in the station building at the Libušín station, now Kamenné Žehrovice. A year later, the family moved to Kačice. The witness entered Pioneer when he was in the third grade. He took part in the national Spartakiad at the Strahov Stadium in 1955. After completing eight years of primary schooling in 1958, he started studying at the vocational school SONP Kladno. He completed the military service in 1962 with the Seventh Special Airborne Regiment in Holešov. During it, he participated in a total of 15 jumps from the plane, including one from the balloon. In 1970 he first joined the Nosek Mine in Tuchlovice as a mining locksmith and after two years he moved to the Nejedlý I. mine in Libušín. Subsequently, he worked in the newly built Kladno Mine. He became a volunteer mine rescuer and served at HBZS Vinařice (A mining rescue´s association). On January 1, 1991, he was granted a disability pension.