Harald Skala

* 1935

  • "My mother's brother was working in Belgium at the time and we went on holiday on top of that. And really with the intention of returning to Liberec in a fortnight. We got on the train, and it left Liberec around ten o'clock in the evening. My then wife was already in a different state, she fell asleep tired. We arrived in Cheb and stood there at the station for almost two hours. The border guards were passing through, checking everything, we had to open our suitcases, show our exit documents, and they checked how many rings and watches we had. Then we saw that a young family had been pulled off the train and two border guards took them away, they were not allowed to come in with us. Then the train finally started moving. My wife was sitting in the compartment, asleep, and I was standing outside in the corridor, looking out. The first thing that struck me was that the train was strangely silent, because I was used to hearing that typical sound on the train - tuk tuk tuk - as the switches between the tracks were crossed. And suddenly that sound was gone. We were on the German side, the sun started to come out, I was looking out and suddenly I saw trucks in different colours with different ads. Nowhere did it say 'forever with the Soviet Union' and various slogans. The barracks were beautifully plastered, the plaster had fallen off on some of them, the fields were neat. And that's when I started thinking, 'Where do you belong?'"

  • "I finally got the uniform - a brown shirt, black shorts, a belt and a dagger. I was very proud of it." - "What was on the belt? Was there any writing on it?" - "I don't know, I guess. I folded everything up nicely in the chimney on my nightstand and waited for my father to come. I wanted to show him off. My father always came to me when he came home from work and we talked for a while. He came over and saw the folded uniform, looked at it, sat down next to me and didn't say anything at first. And then I saw that he started to shed tears. I asked him what was wrong. He didn't say a word, got up and left without a word. I remember that to this day, I didn't understand at the time. I was proud of it, a beautiful uniform for free. But I only understood later what it was all about."

  • "One day I was looking out of the window and I saw two Russian soldiers coming out of the house across the street with a radio in their hands. And I recognized the radio - it was the radio of the family that had the five boys. They put the radio on the sidewalk and started turning knobs, but the radio wasn't playing. So this one guy took a machine gun and shot the radio. At that moment, a Russian officer appeared. I was just watching that there was some kind of a discussion, a conversation. Suddenly the officer pulled out his gun and shot the soldier. I almost fell out of the window. I got sick, I ran to my mother in the kitchen, I said, 'Mom, Mom, he shot him.' The other soldier must have put him away, I didn't see him again after that."

  • "I applied, went to Chrudim, passed the exams. I was one of the best. I was convinced that in September I would go to Chrudim and enter the industrial school. Then sometime in the summer, in July, a letter came from the Ministry of Education. My parents opened it, and at first I didn't know what it was. Then my father disappeared, he didn't speak to us for several days. And then it came out that I wasn't admitted to the school, that I had been rejected. No reason given. My father then went to the Ministry of Culture in Prague, where the letter was addressed. He came back, nothing came out. My mother told me later that I was rejected because she was a Sudeten German and my father was a former civil servant, we lived in Jihlava and I went to a German school."

  • "One day we were up at the hut on Suchy vrch (in the Orlicke hory). We went there for lunch and there were a lot of people there. All the tables were occupied, but there were only two Soviet officers sitting at one of them, and two seats were still vacant. So we sat down with them, because nobody wanted to sit there. My father knew a little Russian at that time and the two of them started to talk to him somehow. They had ordered vodka, I think, and they wanted to make a toast. They ordered one vodka for my father too. My father never drank, but he didn't dare refuse. He held the vodka glass in his hand, the two of them stood up, picked up the vodka glass and both shouted, 'For a free Lithuania!' It was the Lithuanians, and at that moment everyone around started clapping. Very quickly, everyone became terribly drunk. I remember we backed out because my father didn't want to drink. What happened after that, I don't know."

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Liberec, 16.08.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:04:27
  • 2

    Liberec, 14.11.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 02:33:38
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

His Sudeten German origin harmed him under the Communists, helped him after emigration

Memorial in PTP uniform, November 1956, Stříbro
Memorial in PTP uniform, November 1956, Stříbro
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Harald Skala was born on 3 July 1935 in Žacléř. He came from a mixed Czech-German marriage, his mother was a Sudeten German. He grew up in Český Brod and was supposed to go to a Czech school, but with the beginning of the Nazi occupation the family moved to Jihlava under pressure from the Gestapo. There, he attended a German school and also rowed in the youth organization Deutsche Jungvolk. During the liberation of Jihlava, he experienced looting by Soviet soldiers, as well as the oppression and departure of the German population. At the beginning of the 1950s he wanted to enter the industrial school in Chrudim, but the communist regime prevented him from doing so. So he went to school for a while, but later he was able to enter the school and graduated. He and his future wife decided to go to Liberec to work. During the war he served in the Auxiliary Technical Battalions (PTP) in Svatý Tomáš in Šumava. During the 1960s he worked in a transport company in Liberec. His first marriage, in which he had a daughter, broke up. He married a second time, but soon married a third time. In 1969, he and his third wife went to visit his uncle in Belgium and decided to stay in emigration. Thanks to his Sudeten German origin, Harald Skala was able to live and work in Germany. He worked for a long time in the nuclear power industry and was involved in the transportation of nuclear substances. His third marriage, which produced a second daughter, also broke up. After the fall of the Iron Curtain, he was involved in organizing tourist tours from Germany to North Bohemia. In 2010 he moved with his fourth wife to the Zittau region, close to the Czech border. He lived there in 2022.