Bohuslav Maleňák

* 1933

  • "It was not only the Germans who shot at us, but it was ours as well. We took off. It was going up to Hutisko steeply. We were carrying water. It was pumped down from Bučisko. When the front started to move, there was no water, so we had to go down to Bečva to get water to keep everything alive. And then the Russians came and took everything from us. Horses, cows, they took everything. We had nothing left. That's how we ended up."

  • "We built it. Once we built the jump, we had a lot of people flocking in. I don't even know where they were from, but it was a crowd. They were watching us jump from both sides. We were good at it, we could jump. Our skis were poor. I had my dad's skis and they were so long. But we were jumping and the crowd was excited. Then the ski jump went missing, I don't even know why. There was no more jumping. I went to Prague to study physical education and I didn't do those jumps here anymore."

  • "I started skiing right away. My dad made skis, I remember that. He cut a piece of beech and made us skis. We used to ski down from Hradisko. Then he got us some nice ones with bindings. The bindings were so strange to fasten to hold it. You could stick your feet in the front. But it was good. That Umlauf respected us. He didn't speak much Czech, he was Austrian. But he used to watch us going into the woods to see if we were chasing rabbits and deer. It was nice, and I enjoyed my time there."

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    Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, 18.12.2019

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    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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    Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, 18.12.2019

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    délka: 42:29
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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I learned to shoot in my childhood, that‘s why I was successful in biathlon

Bohuslav Maleňák, mid 1950s, representative for Dukla Liberec in ski jumping.
Bohuslav Maleňák, mid 1950s, representative for Dukla Liberec in ski jumping.
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Bohuslav Maleňák was born on September 13, 1933 in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm. His mother Františka Maleňáková was one of the renowned embroiderers from Zubří, his father Josef was employed as a gamekeeper on the Hradisko farm. It was a large farmstead on the outskirts of Rožnov, which was run by the manager, Austrian Karel Umlauf. Bohuslav Maleňák worked in agriculture from childhood and helped his father to chase and feed the animals in the forests. Hradisko was a prosperous and rich estate. After the liberation of Rožnov, however, the Red Army plundered it. Bohuslav graduated from the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport in Prague. His great hobby was ski jumping. He and the Solanský brothers built a ski jumping hill at Hradisko on their own and hundreds of people came there to watch their jumps. In 1955 he became a member of the Dukla Liberec club and represented the club in ski jumping and biathlon. For many years he taught physical education at the Secondary School of Agriculture in Rožnov.