Vladimír Polák

* 1937

  • “It was quite cruel. It was very cold. We had some stones in the wagon and carried some wood. Something was warming up on a stove or tea was brewed. We were put in various places in a wagon. We carried things to live on the road. Before leaving, the joiners had a lot of work to do. They made such wooden boxes with handles for clothing. As for food, we had flour, sugar and salt. Before the ride, a pig was killed at home, and we made sausages, which were stacked in a bucket and covered with warm lard that preserved it. Butter was squeezed at home to keep it from rancid and spoiling.”

  • “I remember it and it was a distressed moment. He said goodbye to us at our home gate. As if he knew it, he said, 'Olinka and Vládíček, we see each other for last time. I join the army and the sky closes behind me and we will not see each other ever again.‘ And he was right.”

  • “They arrived at night and robbed. It was always horrible. My mum was a widow and I was an orphan, my dad was already dead. For some time we lived with my mother's parents in a small village called Májovky in Moldava u Cupalů. They always came to the yard with horses and a car at night and went looting. Every time we went home in the evening, we knocked out wooden shutters from the outside and sprinkled the doors from the inside so that they could not enter. They always got in anyway. They had guns, and by the butt they broke out windows or doors. If we could not stop them, they would take everything they could; mainly food: flour, sugar, salt, bread, meat and so on. They took it from inside the building. Outside, they went into a pigsty and stole a cow with a calf or killed a pig and threw it on a wagon or took our horse. They kept stealing everything, especially at night.”

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    Olomouc, 14.06.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 02:14:40
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu Stories of the region - Central Moravia
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I want to lay a flower there

Vladimír Polák 1
Vladimír Polák 1
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Vladimír Polák was born on November 28, 1937 in the village of Mirohošť in Dubenský Újezd in Volhynia in what was then Poland (nowadays Ukraine) as the only child of his parents Antonín and Olga. His father enlisted in the 1st Czechoslovak Independent Brigade in the USSR. He was killed shortly after joining the army on March 27, 1944 during the bombing of Rivne. In February 1947 Vladimir and his mother re-emigrated to Czechoslovakia and settled in the village Hněvotín near Olomouc. Vladimir then trained as an electro mechanic for communication and signalling equipment and then began working in Signaling Workshops in Olomouc (later Railway Automation (AŽD)), where he remained until retirement. In 1959 he married Jiřina Ištvánová. Together they raised their three children - Vladimir, Jirina and Vitezslav. In 2019 he and his wife still lived in Hněvotín.