Vlastimil Valenta

* 1934

  • "I was just at an exercise with a chemical unit here in Červená Voda, just as a soldier. When we woke up in the morning there was already lots of noise in the hallways and everywhere the occupation, occupation. And how there used to be those slogans of joining with the Soviet Union for eternity, they were striking those down with brooms and anything they could find, getting those letters down, the soldiers. And then noon came and put an armoured transport in the gate and that they weren't letting anything inside the gate. And then the Poles came, that they have to let them in there, that if they would not fulfill their orders, they would put him in jail, the commander of that garrison, that was supposed to enter there. And so the men, soldiers, or should I say officers, decided, that they would take a quick look in a factory. There were Poles working the factories here almost everywhere. And so they took some of those Polish women there with them and they apparently made a fuss there and gave out to their soldiers, that they should go walk home. They couldn't have survived it."

  • "I then went to look in the village and saw the SS and Russians there. They were hidden in the school air raid shelter and were shooting at the Russians. One chauffeur drove down there and I don't know, if it was a general - it was some kind of commissioned officer. And they shot him just as I was walking towards that car. I was walking on the other side of the road, and I see him there as he's crumpling down in the car. And that chauffeur immediately turned around, I think he was driving for reinforcements, and they drove after them - after those Germans. They were running across this kind of orchard to the forest and he with a submachine gun spun around there for a while, spun and then disappeared, he was probably looking to get reinforcements. There were maybe seven or eight of them there."

  • "The whole village had to go watch it there. They nailed them to two trees and another intersecting plank and it was just about right above a manure pit and that's where the Polish soldiers had to hang them. And the whole thing all around Jedlí was surrounded by German soldiers, so that no partisan could get there. And so they laid down their lives there."

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    Červená Voda, 09.10.2021

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The Whole Village Had to Watch as their Neighbors Were Being Hanged

Vlastimil Valenta in the studio of Paměť národa in Červená Voda
Vlastimil Valenta in the studio of Paměť národa in Červená Voda
zdroj: Paměť národa

Vlastimil Valenta was born on the 5th of December 1934 in Václavov and grew up in the village Jedlí na Zábřežsku. After the Munich Diktat, the village found itself in the taken Sudetenland terriotory, despite being inhabited primarily by Czech speaking people. During the Second World War, on the 10th of July 1944, he became witness to the public execution of three inhabitants of Jedlí: Jan Filip, Martin Pavlík and Vladimír Juránek. During the liberation he also witnessed a firefight between German and Soviet soldiers. After the war tens of thousands of its German inhabitants left Zábřežsko. Vlastimil Valenta apprenticed in Frýdlant nad Ostravicí as a metallurgist. In the year 1954 he was conscripted into an infantry regiment in Hodonín. As part of the mandatory military service he took part in the first Spartakiad in the year 1955. He experienced the arrival of Warsaw Pact troops at a military exercise in Červená Voda. In the year 1982 he got permission to visit his sister that had gotten married in the Federal Republic of Germany. He had to go to three interrogations to be able to obtain this permission. He had three children with his wife. He lived for ten years in Zábřeh na Moravě. Later in the 70s they bought a house in Červená Voda. In the year 2021 he lived in a retirement home in Červená Voda.