Karel Kučera

* 1940

  • “We were given order vouchers, or ‘zakaz’ in Russian, so we could order stuff from the GUM – the biggest department store in Red Square. We sent them our food orders, like for salami – you never saw salami in the local shops. That was Moscow, which received the best supplies! So, we could order Finnish salami and beef tenderloin – but to them, beef was just a cow, and tenderloin was simply any piece of the cow. When they cut pork, pork was just a pig, and it was the same when it comes to the tenderloin, and they would cut the pieces for sale on a table saw. Bone fragments were pressed into the meat, so when I brought it home, my wife had to scrub the meat with a hand brush.”

  • “I was in seventh grade, and Škoda workers broke the Fifth Gateway door down on the first of June when the unrest begun. That was the way that we used to walk, and [guards] wouldn’t let us use it. So, the teacher took us from school using the back road via Zátiší, and we came home from the other side. Right after the currency reform, most of the people who took part in the revolt were kicked out of their jobs and had to find work wherever they could, such as with roadwork crews. That happened to one man from our house; he was a nice person otherwise, but he got involved in it somehow – and that was the payback.”

  • “I actually remember that air raid of April ’45. We were hiding in the shelter at the 1-km road from Škoda to Belánka – the shelter was actually located underneath the locomotive plant’s test track. I remember being inside the shelter. Air had to be blown in. Then electricity cut out, so men were asked to work the blowers manually to supply air to the shelter. And then, when we left the shelter, I remember the lower side of Karlov was on fire. My aunt lived there, and they stayed at our place for some time after that, since they couldn’t stay in their own apartment.”

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    Plzeň, 19.06.2023

    (audio)
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Plzeň’s Karlov was left to crumble for years but the locals loved it dearly

Karel Kučera in May 1945
Karel Kučera in May 1945
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Karel Kučera was born in Plzeň’s Karlov quarter, which no longer exists today, on 28 July 1940. His father Karel Kučera Sr was a member of the management board of the cooperative that built the local Lidový dům (People’s House; the local community centre). Nicknamed ‘Liďák’, the facility was a popular local hub that included a pub, a cinema, a library, and a dance hall where dances called ‘fajf’ were organised. Karel Kučera’s father used to play records during the dances, effectively becoming Plzeň’s first DJ. The witness recalls the devastating air raid of the Škoda plant in April 1945. He also remembers a Karlov local who was persecuted due to revolting against the currency reform in 1953. Having completed high school of electrical engineering, Karel Kučera obtained his tertiary education in the field (he completed some of the latter on a part-time basis) and worked at the machining section of the Škoda Plzeň plant, which was named the V. I. Lenin Plant in 1951–1965 for ideological reasons. He took a business trip to Moscow in the 1980s and was shocked by the local low standard of life. At the time of recording in 2023, Karel Kučera was living peacefully in his cottage in Krtín.