Jiří Matulák

* 1927

  • "So tell me about your father, how it happened, so that we have it chronologically." "Well, how it happened. Well, they said, that guy over there, he's an informer, catch him... And the other one, that's a German, even though he's in disguise, so catch them. So some three people went after them, well and this one chap, they don't even know who, right, but they knew that those two... They shot him in the leg and he couldn't remember anything more."

  • "Please, listen, the men took these hunting rifles and they went to defend the republic, and here, what's it called, with the air strip, Vodochody, and when you're driving up from Klíčany then on the right side there's a forest. It's there even today. And the Germans, those were frontliners, they caught those men, had them kneel in the ditch and they shot them, some three or four of them there. But there was a younger one, and he ran almost up to the forest, they let him get some excersise, then they shot him. Now look, two Russians drove in a bike with sidecar, but a German one, and they just shot all the Germans."

  • "Even our neighbour told on father, that he listened to London. And because they made this stupid signature, this bububu bum, bububu bum, this drumming, right, and it repeated several times, and our neighbour heard it and told on father, that he listened to London."

  • "It was like this. Now the Czechs were getting even with the Germans... I didn't like that either. Because those Germans weren't actually responsible for anything. They had to go to war. They were soldiers. And here apparently if someone wanted to have a shot, then no problem. Can you imagine that?" "So you witnessed some attacks on Germans after the war?" "Of course!" "Could you describe what you saw exactly?" "Well, they had them on this training pitch, had them running in circles, and if someone wanted to have a shot, then he had a shot." "Where was that?" "Well, in Kralupy." "How many Germans did you see them shoot while you were there?" "I saw one. I don't like that stuff..."

  • "So we went straight to Dejvice and we got to the river, to the Barricade Bridge, and we stayed there for four days and... I mean I didn't really understand things, I was seventeen, and when you look at your seventeen-year-olds, what they understood, nothing, nothing, not even... that there were shots being fired there, that yes, and also I saw that the so-called captain on the Barricade Bridge changed his dress three times a day. When it was bad, he ran off and came back after a while as a civillian, and when he saw that it had calmed down a bit, then straight away he got out his uniform and again he was, you know..." "And he had a Czech Army uniform from before the war?" "Yes, yes, yes." "That's what you saw on the Barricade Bridge, he changed according to the situation. Did he try to give people orders or something...?" "No, no, no..."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Lovosice, 25.07.2008

    (audio)
    délka: 02:06:33
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Portraits of Prague citizens
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

„I wish that people were nicer to each other, that they could come to agreement more.“

Jiří Matulák 1973_detail.jpg (historic)
Jiří Matulák
zdroj: foto: Lukáš Krákora

Jiří Matulák was born on the 21st of August in Terezín. His father, Jan Matulák, was a transporter. The family had to leave Terezín in 1942, as the Germans turned the town into a Jewish ghetto. They moved to Dolany near Libčice. In May 1945, Matulák‘s father was shot while chasing an informer in Kralupy-upon-Vltava. The wound made it impossible for him to drive a car. Jiří then had to take over financial responsibility for the family. At the end of the war, during the Prague Uprising in May 1945, Matulák, accompanied by his friends Karel Pšanský and Jan Rohan, went by foot from Dolany to Prague. They armed themselves with rifles from a munition train in Bubeneč and joined the fighting on the Barricade Bridge, defending the barricades there for several days. In the days following the war he helped with the transportation of doctors, nurses and medicaments to Terezín. After the war the whole family moved to Pohořany and Jiří Matulák made a living as a private transporter right up until 1958. In the years 1945-48 in Kralupy-over-Vltava he received tuition as a car mechanic. In 1948 he was drafted into compulsory military service. In the years 1958-59 he was imprisoned for 11 months (formerly it was for 18 months), because he did not inform against his brother Pavel, who was preparing to escape over the borders. Starting in the Sixties he led a long and successful motorcycling career. He married for the second time in 1979 with Libuše Bryndová. They live together to this day, in Lovosice.