Jaroslav Langer

* 1924

  • "Two tanks were about 50 m from the house, where we went to the cellar and fired at the edge to Březce. There was nothing else to do. While we were in the basement of the one villa, another German tank arrived and stopped between the villas, hiding among them. And as soon as they found out that the Soviets were there, they set out(with the tank), opened fire at them, shot them, destroyed them, and drove back into the villas. It was about three meters from us from the cellar. Even at one point, a Soviet plane arrived to shoot at the tank. I don't know how it turned out. We spent the whole day on May 6 in the cellar. "

  • "They took us, we could hardly know where, but it was day, morning. It was the Gestapo headquarters and there was, what they asked about. First of all - they put us each in a different room and there were inscriptions: 'Czechs, shut up!' And such "screams" from the Czechs, so we weren't there first. They called me first. - 'Setzen Sie sich.' I sat here and there was a footbridge, no one was there. Kvidoš was left in the other room. And there were two Gestapo with me. I will say in Czech what he said. He looked at me intently and said, 'Your name, surname, birth, address, school. Once again! ‘And again: name, surname ... He thought I had a rehearsed name, etc.”

  • „1. September I started going to the fourth grade. The so-called fourth middle schools began - that was it! He had the four-year middle school- that was something! It was in Zábřeh, and when they went to the square, there was a tall light lamppost and a Henlein man on it like a hangman. He had a farmer, braces, drawstring pants, white stockings. And here he had the inscription: 'The Third Reich is well isolated. At our site are France, England and the Soviet Union. ' I can see that with my very own eyes. Everyone was watching. And he was still hanging there on the twenty-eighth before Munich came. "

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Olomouc, 06.02.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:45:14
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 2

    Olomouc, 13.02.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:09:13
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
  • 3

    Olomouc, 06.03.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:02:44
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of 20th Century
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I was totally deployed in Germany, but my life was in danger at home

At the time of total deployment, Tailfingen, Germany, 1944
At the time of total deployment, Tailfingen, Germany, 1944
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Jaroslav Langer was born on December 8, 1924 in Štěpánov near Olomouc. He grew up as the only son of his mother Anna, née Ramelt, and Josef Langer. Shortly after the wedding, his parents divorced and his mother took care of little Jaroslav herself. The witness spent his childhood mainly in Štěpánov in a small house and mainly on the street, where he belonged to a children‘s party, in which Czech children mixed with German ones. He later joined the scout unit. From childhood, he played passionately football, and later hockey, and was versatile. From the summer of 1938 until the occupation of the Sudetenland he lived with his mother in Ráječko near Zábřeh, then they returned to Štěpánov. During World War II, he graduated from the Business Academy in Olomouc. On March 15, 1944, he received a call to work for the Reich. On April 1, he first took a train to Stuttgart, Germany, and later moved about 80 kilometres south to Tailfingen. During the total deployment, he and his friend Kvido Kolomazník took a trip to Constance, where they were detained by a German patrol and spent two days in prison. In August 1944, Jaroslav applied for leave in the protectorate and never returned to work in Germany. He experienced liberation under dramatic circumstances in Štěpánov. After the war, he completed basic military service in Olomouc and Brno and then worked as an accountant on the construction of the Vír dam. In 1951 he was called up from the reserve for an extraordinary exercise and later remained as a professional soldier with the Czechoslovak People‘s Army (ČSLA). He worked, for example, as the head of a training group at a military college in Martin. Although he remained a non-member of the party for the rest of his life, he ended up in the army in 1980 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In the 1980s, he managed to travel abroad several times - for example to Canada at the invitation of an old friend, whom he met during his work in Germany. In the last years of communism, the StB was also interested in his travels, as follows from the preserved archival material OB-1046 OV. The witness spent most of his life with his family in Brno, with his wife Ludmila, née Schäferová, raising two children. In 2021 he lived in Olomouc.