Zdeněk Nevšímal

* 1949

  • "We were watching TV in Petrovice, members of the Public Security came there and told us: 'Boys, if you drive somewhere, Russian troops are already standing behind Petrovice in the forest.' We drove around them. They had parked zilas and gaziks on the forest roads and camouflaged them with branches. When they heard the rumble of three combine harvesters, they set off. It was a little suspicious to them, some noise was approaching, when they saw that their SK Soviet combine harvesters number 4 were driving, so they started waving at us. And I showed them my fists, like this. I was standing next to a colleague who immediately slapped my hands and said: "Can't you see that he has machine guns and magazines hanging on his chest?! What if they are sharp in them and they shoot at us?' So, he knocked my hand off. From then on, I was trembling with fear all the way that we might have been dead."

  • "Dad also told me that before the former residents were displaced in 1946... it didn't happen all at once, someone had to stay there to tend the cattle because otherwise they would die. I even remember now that it dragged on with my father all his life, that he fought for one family to stay there. They were knowledgeable about land, the quality of the land, and the fertility of fields. He wanted them to stay there so they wouldn't be displaced. They would have liked to stay there, but they got it by some order from the Revolutionary Guards, who guarded them with a gun on their belt. It was already stamped, so they had to leave. My father fought for them, and that got stuck with him, the communist leaders on the state estates reminded him that he stood up for the Germans. He once told me that before the wires were built on the borders, people were still coming back. They hid things and felt that it might not turn out well, so they went for them at night. They were returning across the border, allowing themselves to be displaced only a little beyond the borders with Germany and Austria. There was also one case, I don't remember exactly, I don't know which house it was, but when the former residents felt that they probably wouldn't come back, they set the house on fire. They returned on foot across the border, through Haidmühle, Stožec, past Žleby. They went for other things that no one had stolen before. But quite often it happened that the houses had already been looted."

  • ,,[State Security]... they invited me in the fall, in a few months. And they invited me to Lann's class. They invited me to see if I knew Mrs. Klauberová from Igla. She worked as a laboratory assistant there. They asked if I knew her, if we talked together. At this time [in České Budějovice] a certain bishop from Philadelphia was visiting, because it was the anniversary of the death of Jan Nepomuk Neumann. There was a pilgrimage in Prachatice and I also took part in it. You could see that they had filmed me. There was someone standing on the wall and not taking pictures in the direction of the altar or the procession. He took pictures against people, so he collected all the faces. During the interrogation, they wanted to know what I heard there, who I talked to. I was there only with my relatives, I didn't hear anything against the Communist party of Czechoslovakia, nothing was said anywhere. Everything revolved around the deceased Bishop Neumann, and at the end [State Security investigator] told me: 'You want to send your children to religion education, so sign a paper for us here.' Of course, it was such a nice paper. I even remember there were linden leaves and a symbol. I thought they wanted to sign this, I didn't read it because I was already so nervous, I put my signature in there and that was it and that was the end of it for me."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    České Budějovice, 05.11.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 02:08:07
  • 2

    České Budějovice, 11.11.2021

    (audio)
    délka: 51:05
  • 3

    České Budějovice, 21.04.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:44:39
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

No one ever told us anything about faith because they knew we stood for it

Zdeněk Nevšímal in 1972
Zdeněk Nevšímal in 1972
zdroj: Archive of the witness

Zdeněk Nevšímal was born on August 11, 1949 in the village Pěkná (formerly Šenava, in German Schönau) in southern Bohemia into a strongly religious Christian family. His father Jaroslav Nevšímal came to the village in 1946 from Chýstovice in Pelhřimov area to take over the cattle after the displaced Germans, and he stayed in the village. Zdenek‘s mother Kristýna Nevšímalová (née Kadlíčková), originally a nurse, worked together with Zdenek‘s father in agriculture in the village Pěkná. From an early age, the witness was led to religion by his parents, thus he became a witness to the transformation and gradual decline of the religious life of local residents in the 1950s. In 1965, after graduating from the burgher school, he entered the Agricultural Mechanization School in České Budějovice. He experienced the dramatic events of August 1968 as an eighteen-year-old in the combine summer job organized by the Unified agricultural cooperative Volary, with which he was in Počepice near Sedlčany to help with the harvest. After graduation, he applied for a position at the the Unified agricultural cooperative in Volary. However, the local comrades were not interested in him, the reason being the antipathy of several of them to his father. In 1969, he joined the army for mandatory basic training. He remained in the army until 1979 as a professional soldier. He is very critical of the conditions and development of the Czechoslovak army in the seventies. He then joined the Igla company, where he worked until his retirement. In 1988, during an interrogation by the State Security, according to his words, he unknowingly signed the cooperation for the promise that his children would be able to attend religion classes. He states that the State Security was contacted only once, in the revolutionary days of 1989, and did not harm anyone. In 2022, he lived in České Budějovice and helped in the church of St. Vojtěch in České Budějovice as a churchwarden.