Jiří Kaštánek

* 1940

  • "I only remember the end of the war. As I said, when the power plant got hit by an aerial bomb, they brought my dad home on a stretcher. He was given an extra ration of milk because he got poisoned during the firefight. That was his greatest contribution to Baťa's factory."

  • "My father. After the forty-eighth, after February. So I remember three such tradesmen. One was Mr. Oppelt, he was a Jew who survived a Nazi concentration camp. He had a clothes shop somewhere on Mírov Square in Ústí. And he thought he'd won his life back. I don't know why, but the communists arrested him one day. And suddenly Mrs. Oppelt got his bloody clothes with a note: 'Shot on the run.' Mr. Hocke had a glass and porcelain shop there. And my dad had a shop with electrical goods. I don't know what Mr. Hocke was doing, but my dad, when he found out about Mr. Oppelt, he quietly packed up and disappeared. We didn't know anything about him. He was at grandmother's, at his mother-in-law's, in the countryside in Kocanda. He spent a terribly cold winter in February and March in an attic. He brought electricity to their house, so it was worthwhile for them to feed him there. When the worst was over, he came back. I don't know anything more about it. I know someone said to me, 'Hey, we found his name among the collaborators with the Secret police.' I never asked him about it. Because even if he did sign in, and maybe he did, I totally understand his reasons. Because he kept thinking about the unfortunate case of Mr. Oppelt, who believed he'd won his life back. And he was mistaken, as the Communists took over him."

  • "I don't think there was any arms production. No way. At Baťa's they were always making shoes. No arms production. However, our teachers swayed by the communist propaganda were telling us that Baťa made boots for the SS corps. Such were the rumours. This got me in trouble at school because our class teacher claimed that Baťa was going to move the nation to Patagonia to hunt penguins for the shoe soles. I objected saying that it was not true, that my parents came from Zlín and worked for Baťa and that it could not be true. I didn't get punished, but I became rather unpopular from that time on."

  • "I remember this. As I mentioned, it was in the Heimat block, it was surrounded by the streets Raisova, 5. května and I don't know... two other streets. That block, it was, I think, three-story luxury apartments. And one corner of it was hit by a bomb and it was destroyed. We were bunch of boys and we used to go there to collect things. We found a stamp collection, we found model trains. All these things were left there by Germans. Then it was repaired, the block was put back together. All sorts of things around were destroyed."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Ústí nad Labem, 15.07.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:36:49
  • 2

    Praha, 08.12.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 22:21
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I would understand if the Secret police managed to break my dad. He kept thinking about his unfortunate friend Oppelt

Jiří Kaštánek's graduation photograph, 1958
Jiří Kaštánek's graduation photograph, 1958
zdroj: Jiří Kaštánek

Jiří Kaštánek was born on 4 January 1940 in Zlín. His father worked as an electrician in Baťa‘s factory, his mother as a shop assistant. At the end of the Second World War, Petr Kaštánek experienced air raids by the anti-Nazi Allies on Zlín. His father was brought home on a stretcher as he was fighting fire at the power plant after one of these raids. After the liberation of Zlín, he and other children were given American chewing gums and chocolates from the Soviet soldiers. They were throwing them out of moving cars. In the autumn of 1945, the family moved to Ústí nad Labem into a luxury apartment inherited from the Sudeten Germans. His father was in the electrical goods business and he prospered. However after the communist takeover in February 1948, he lost five shops and was hiding from the communists for some time. His friend Oppelt, a Jewish textile merchant, who survived the Nazi concentration camps, ended up in a police cell after the communists took power. Soon his wife was brought his bloodied clothes and told that he had been shot on the run. Jiří‘s father went into hiding in the countryside for several months, then returned home. After 1989, Jiří learned that his father had collaborated with the communist secret police. But he never blamed him, because he knew how their Jewish friend Oppelt, a similarly successful businessman like his father, had turned out. In the late 1960s, Jiří Kaštánek joined the Emil František Burian Theatre as a lighting technician, he stayed for 23 years there. There he experienced the Prague Spring of 1968, the Occupation of Czechoslovakia by the Warsaw Pact troops, the Normalisation in the 1970s and the Velvet Revolution. In 1969, he worked as a lighting technician on the acclaimed film The Cremator (Spalovač mrtvol). After 1989, he worked as a lighting technician at the State Opera and the Drama Club. At the Vinohrady Theatre he lit the famous musical Les Misérables. In 2021, he lived in the Lounsko region and devoted himself to beekeeping. The recording of the witness was supported by the Statutory City of Ústí nad Labem.