Vladimír Včela

* 1930

  • “I met one scout by chance in Jihlava, in 1938. There was a scout rally in a place where, today you can find the ‘House of health’; next to the Jewish cemetery. I was totally astonished by them because up until then, all I knew was boys from the apartment buildings. These guys were so different. They were amazing, beautiful, perfect to me. I stayed with them until very late that evening and I had already made up mind. I would become one of them. But first of all, I had to find them. Therefore, I was searching for scouts because I didn’t know where they existed. When I finally found them, they told me that I was still too young to become a scout. They said, I would have to wait a year. The waiting lasted until 1945.”

  • “The summer camp was a great experience. It was fabulous, a very unusual experience. We were playing a game and I was out of the camp. I was coming back and behind Vilánec, there’s a hill in the forest. There was a group of Soviet soldiers. It was just after the war, so it was quite normal to spot groups of Russian soldiers. They were slaughtering a cow there. They killed it and they had a field kitchen, right next to it. They were just starting to cut it up when I was walking past. I had never seen a dead cow before. One of the soldiers gave me a piece of meat and said, ‘here you are’. I brought it into the camp and of course it was a great feat because in those times food was very scarce and meat even more so.”

  • “Please, have a diary where you put down what you ate for lunch and every now and then, add in which year it was. Add at least the year. There’s so much you’ve done in your life that sometimes, when you’re going through your picture collections, you don’t know if it was in 1968, 1942, or before the war or if it was in the 1990s. Note at least, the year. Don’t note, what you had for lunch but put down where you camped, from when to when, five lines are enough. After twenty or fifty years, you’ll be able to act smart, by remembering everything. I mean, I didn’t do it, nobody really does it and therefore, a lot of things get lost.”

  • Celé nahrávky
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    ČR, 01.07.2011

    (audio)
    délka: 02:27:56
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu A Century of Boy Scouts
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

They told me I was too young to be a Scout and to wait. In the end, I waited for six years.

Včela Vladimír
Včela Vladimír
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Vladimír Včela, nicknamed Géza, was born on March 19, 1930, in Sedlec nearby Kutná Hora. Until 1935, he lived in Chuchelná in the region of Opavsko. Since 1935, his family lived in Jihlava. Throughout the years 1944-1945, he was a slave laborer in the factory Kotva (anchor) Jihlava. He then worked for Stavoprojekt Praha and Stavoprojekt Jihlava. He was a construction technician and a chief of construction works. He‘s been in retirement since 1990. Right after the war in 1945, he joined the Scout/Junák. He was a member of, the 3rd troop of the Center in Jihlava. He took part in the summer camp at Vílanec, that had been organized annually until, the prohibition of Scouting. The 3rd troop in Jihlava was renewed in 1968 and Géza became its leader and secretary of the district council of the Junák. The existence of the troop was terminated again, in 1970. After the Velvet revolution, Géza became the leader of the first center. He later left to the Club of the Oldscouts Nr. 216 in Jihlava.