Zbyněk Unčovský

* 1930

  • “When it came to the realization that the gamekeeper’s lodge is in the Sudetenland –those Sudetes had of course made that up – my grandad had to be gone in twenty-four hours, be moved out. So, the wood, the logs, was carried on ordinary farm wagons, those meant for collecting the corn from fields. I hanged around as well, because I could handle the logs perfectly, so I loaded the wood on the farm wagons, well, and I quite felt it after we left. The two Germans, the workers, who were still subordinate to my granddad, the gamekeeper, and who pruned the forest and cut down the trees, well, I though it was quite cruel that after we arrived to Rohozná to the border, they told us with a smile on their faces: ‘You were loading it and we did not see you all the time, so you will unload it here, so we can take a look that you do not carry something else there and then you will load it.’ Well, it made me quite mad, as an eight-year-old boy, so I was somehow mean at them, so after that they called off this demand.”

  • “Now the Russkies arrived to Bystré. The accommodation provider came with the representative of a revolutionary national committee and said that in an hour we have to empty this room and those two rooms and that there will be soldiers. My dad used the rooms, which the Russkies chose, for his shoemaking business and in two rooms he stored finished shoes. He had those huge shelves there, on the walls in both rooms, from the floor to the ceiling. So, they dragged straw there from the barn and they slept on those shelves. They were supposed to stay there for three days and they really packed up after three days, they did not tell anyone a word and left. So, we started to clean.”

  • “I lived in Salmovská Street which means behind the Church of Saint Ignatius and as soon as I walked into Ječná Street, the German soldiers appeared and pushed me back into my house and actually they did not let anyone there at all on that day because their soldiers besieged the whole Charles Square. So, I had only the sound recording from it in my head because there was the shooting. Only the second day they let us go to school and at that time the church window was riddled with bullets as it is today.”

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    Polička, 27.09.2020

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He was supposed to marry the daughter of a factory owner who however was shot by partisans without a trial

Zbyněk Unčovský, 1940s
Zbyněk Unčovský, 1940s
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Zbyněk Unčovský was born on July 19th 1930 in a small town Bystré in the Vysočina Region. He enjoyed visiting his grandparents who lived in a gamekeeper‘s lodge in nearby Rohozná. He helped them when they had to move in a hurry due to the Munich Dictate as well. After finishing primary school, he started to study at the Archbishop Grammar School in Prague and after its dissolution he studied at the Jirásek Grammar School in Resslova Street. In this place, he witnessed the shooting during the dragnet for the paratroopers hidden in the crypt of the Saints Cyril and Methodius Cathedral in June 1942. At the end of the war, he moved back to Bystré. He was supposed to transfer to a textile school in Brno and then he should have started to work in Josef Čipera’s textile factory in Bystré. These plans foundered after the killing of the factory owner by partisans. Nevertheless, Zbyněk Unčovský graduated from the Secondary Industrial Textile School. He engaged in sports, took part in Sokol public exercise routines and during his compulsory military service in 1951–1953 he served in Military Sports Club. As an amateur actor he together with his father joined the shooting of the movie All My Compatriots directed by Vojtěch Jasný.