Johann Vater

* 1930

  • “At those times, they used to say: ‘You cannot trust a Czech. Czechs are frauds.’ My dad would always say – he fought in the WWI and the Czechs were enlisted as well because they were Austrian citizens – and he would always say: ‘In Italy, whenever the Italians attacked, the Czechs disappeared. They never shot at anyone. And when the fight ended, they came back again.’ Father used to say all the time: ‘ You cannot trust a Czech nor a bull. Because the Czech has a bad character.’”

  • „Hitler did it in Russia as well. What had he done? He had so many people executed. Innocent ones. He stole, too. There was a German guy from Sudeten, he couldn’t go back [to Czechoslovakia] and he was a genuine Nazi, a member of the SS, and he would always say: ‘If I could ever come to Czechoslovakia, I would kill many Czechs,’ he would say, ‘because they chased us away.’ Why would he say that? The Czechs had to defend themselves, on one hand. Why were they so cruel as to expel the Sudeten Germans? We don’t know. That they kicked people out of their homes this way. That they became this cruel! Despite having sat at home all war long. Nothing bad happened to them and then they behaved so awfully to the soldiers.”

  • “All the Hitlerjugend, everyone was being prepared for fighting. They always told us there that when they see us in Russia, they will kick our arses when we wouldn’t know what to do. In Hitlerjugend, it was nearly worse than in the actual army. We had to learn how to shoot, we had to learn how to march. But in Windhaag, when we marched… The teacher was a true Nazi. He cursed at us a lot. When one of the boys got out of step, when he marched, he would yell: ‘The Russians will kick your arse one day if you wont be able to march better.’”

  • Celé nahrávky
  • 1

    Freistadt, 04.09.2020

    (audio)
    délka: 01:25:34
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu  Stories of the Czech-Austrian Borderland KPF-01-210
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Before the war, Czechoslovakia was much more economically advanced than Austria

Johann Vater in 2020
Johann Vater in 2020
zdroj: Natáčení ve studiu

Johann Vater was born on the 28th of May in 1930 at the family farm in Predetschlag, a community that lies near the Upper Austrian Freistadt, about three kilometres away from the Austrian-Czech borders. The witness spent all his life in the place where he was born, he witnessed its changes through time. Johann attended basic school in Windhaag. During the WWII, he joined the Hitlerjugend which was obligatory at that time. He remembers the Red Army stationed in Upper Austria. After he finished the basic school, he started to work in the family farm with his parents and gradually, he took over. In 2020, Johann Vater lived in Predetschlag, having handed the family farm to his descendants.