Jaroslav Stuchlý

* 1926

  • “My sister Tonička attended secondary school and her professor gave her a letter to hand over to the village secretary, his name was Folta. She came home and told her mother, and her mother said, 'Get the bike right now, go over there and hand it over!' She did not know what it was. When Folta read it, he said: 'Don't tell anyone about this and go home. Don't mention to anyone that you were at my place.' And he left. He was a member of an anti-Nazi group of intellectuals. The professor who sent the message was locked up. He made the mistake of driving home and they were waiting for him there. If he had left work immediately, he would have avoided it. They locked up the whole group, and among them were two young men from Proskovice who were dating my sisters. He was Dr. Sunek, he was a lawyer, and the other was a teacher. They locked up the whole group.”

  • "Then there was liberation. That was something amazing. I was 18 years old. Everything was being restored again. That was a wonderful time. Love, falling in love, which was also in that period. And then came 1948, Victorious February. Everything started to change. But it didn't change all at once, it happened gradually. In 1948, on October 1, I joined the war, for full-time service. Until then, it was still not communism, Masaryk's democracy was still surviving to a certain extent."

  • "We used to go swimming in the Odra, of course, just the boys and naked. The year 1938 came and the Odra was a border river. That was it, we weren't allowed to go there anymore. That was the first intervention at my age when we realized that something was wrong here. Then came 1939. I remember that well because we used to go to Orel. That was the organization that guided us mentally and physically. We were there and one of the leaders came and said: 'Please go home and don't stop anywhere. The Germans came here and are occupying us. Don't talk to anyone and go straight home.'"

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Ostrava - Výškovice, 13.05.2022

    (audio)
    délka: 01:30:03
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Jaroslav Stuchlý (en)
Jaroslav Stuchlý (en)
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Jaroslav Stuchlý was born on November 26, 1926 in Stará Běla near Ostrava as the sixth child of Mr. and Mrs. Stuchlý. During the First Republic, Jaroslav lived a happy childhood alongside his siblings. This was disrupted only in 1938. Jaroslav was 12 years old when Czechoslovakia had to cede a large part of its territory to Nazi Germany as a result of the Munich Agreement. He spent a large part of his adolescence during World War II. In 1941, he began studying at the business secondary school in Veverská Bítýška. In October 1948, he joined basic military service in Klatovy. Together with his colleagues, he was being prepared for the coming of the Third World War. In the inhospitable nature of Šumava, they learned how to move in the terrain and how to avoid the swamps there. After completing basic military service, Jaroslav went to work at the Ferona plant, where he managed the purchase and sale of goods. In May 1989, at the instigation of his brother, Jaroslav joined the Czechoslovak People‘s Party. After the Velvet Revolution, he was co-opted as a representative for the Czechoslovak People‘s Party in the city district of Ostrava South. Two years later, he ran for a non-elective seat in regular elections. Later he was involved in the control committee. In 2022 he lived in Ostrava.