Jan Märtl

* 1947

  • "I remember what my mother used to tell us. She would say that on that day young boys around eighteen or nineteen years ran around Mezipotočí. They had bandages on their sleeves with the letters RG on them, which stood for Revolutionary Guard, and they were the ones who decided who could take what. I know that mother fondly remembered getting a Singer sewing machine as a wedding present, which was quite a luxury in those days and, I would say, a necessity for every housewife with more than one child. Pre-made clothes were not really bought much back then, except maybe for baptisms or first communions and maybe later on for one’s wedding. But between these life events one would sew. The usual things, like shirts and so on, would be re-sewn and adjusted when the older children grew out of them, so that they would fit the younger ones. My mother wasn't allowed to take the sewing machine with her. And I know from my brother, who told me quite recently when we were remembering it all and I was trying to get some stories out of him, that he was very happy on that day, because a tractor came to the house we were living in in Mezipotočí. He saw a tractor for the first time in his life, he had never been on one before. And there was a trailer attached to it and everyone had to get on it and take the luggage they were allowed to take. And he only realized when he was sitting on the trailer looking out of the window that he had forgotten his hat in the kitchen. He used to have this little hat. And it did not end well, because the guy from the Revolutionary Guard told my brother that he wasn't allowed back in the house anymore, so the hat stayed where it was. It's more of a nostalgic memory."

  • "I remember as a little boy, at some point in 1957, some plan to liquidate those uninhabited houses started to form. It was probably some kind of political decision. It was also being said that the houses were potential hiding places for various agents. That’s how it was being explained. It was all the kind of talk of the time. I remember in 1957 the military trucks came and the soldiers jumped out and started putting together these big black Bakelite-like oval boxes or whatever you would call them. They were some sort of mines used in the army. I don't know if they were to be used against tanks, but they were big, they weren't mines used against people. I'm not an expert, I didn’t do military service, but that's what I saw. I know the explosive was yellow. And they piled up entire pyramids of these mines, and a soldier was guarding them. There was a Bakelite lid, with a rubber seal around it, a kind of hardened rubber. And the little soldier who was guarding it, to prevent himself from getting bored, would take a pickaxe, which he would stick into the ground, and we, the children, threw the rubber rings at the handle. Sometimes, they would somehow forget about these soldiers when it came to food, it was not very well organized. I remember we would bring them bread with lard and onions from home and then they would become our even better friends. It turned out that they gradually distributed the mines among the uninhabited houses in the village. They told us to open our windows so that the explosion would not break the glass, and then the soldiers blew up the houses one by one. I can still see those houses in front of me, as they were, complete, with a roof and beams. There was a bang, the house rose, the beams flew through the air like matches, then it fell, the dust settled and that's how it remained. They put several mines in houses that were further away from the village - apparently they had an excess of mines and somehow needed to get rid of them. Then the blows were even bigger and the houses flew even higher. After they would stay like that for years. Nothing happened there. They wouldn’t have dreamt of coming with bulldozers and create parks. All the rubble remained there for years. People would take the top beams to use for heating, or they would takes bits as building material. If a brick was found, it was cleaned and used. So the village de facto disappeared, the village green disappeared, just individual houses remained.”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    České Budějovice, 21.09.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 01:44:29
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

I have never met my extended family

Photo for the photo-album of school-leavers of the Vimperk Forestry School, 1967
Photo for the photo-album of school-leavers of the Vimperk Forestry School, 1967
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Jan Märtl was born on November 13, 1947 in Český Krumlov into a German family that, for generations, had farmed land in Mezipotočí. In 1946, when the expulsion of the German population of Czechoslovakia was taking place, his father Josef Märtl was put into pre-trial detention. Before his father was acquitted and released, all their relatives had already been resettled and the transports were over. After leaving the internment camp in Vyšný in 1947, the Märtl family moved to nearby Zubčice, where his parents were assigned to work for one of the local farmers. Shortly thereafter, Jan’s father was sent to the Jáchymov uranium mines for “re-education.” In 1953, the Märtls were allowed to return to Mezipotočí, but they were no longer allowed to return to their previous home. In 1967, his parents and brother František got permission to emigrate to Germany. Jan Märtl applied for his permission to move in 1969, but it was rejected. He worked for the Vyšší Brod Forestry Administration all his life, until 1990 he needed a special pass to enter the border zone. This, along with his opportunity to travel to the Federal Republic of Germany to visit his parents, made him be noticed by the state security in 1984, who considered him a potential candidate to become an agent for the military counterintelligence service. He refused the proposed job and a year later his file was closed. In 2021, Jan Märtl lived in Frymburk in Český Krumlov.