Josef Veselý

* 1931

  • "And as they drove away, the one car between them was still with armed Germans on that car. And they drove through Čechtice and they had a council there at the town hall, like the council of the town, which after the war already seemed to be consulting about what and how. And by chance, circumstances, my teacher was also there, as a class teacher, he was in the council. And as the Germans drove like that, someone over there next to the town hall, it was by the road, so someone there shot at the Germans. And they were still armed, they drove away with that truck. And both the shot and the commander stopped the car. And we looked at it from that castle, there were windows directly onto that square, that town hall, that's in Čechtice. And when the commander had those German soldiers come down, they were mostly SS men, he let them come down, they occupied the entire town hall. There was the council. Well, they took them out in front of the town hall and now they were somehow... they were saying something to them there and suddenly... there was a retaining wall a little further away, they stood there and they shot all eight councilors there. It's a sad story and they shot them on the spot and quickly put them in cars and drove away."

  • "The firemen and gendarmes came together and cleaned the box. I was there too, but I was far away, they wouldn't let us in, in case something happened, for security reasons. So, they cleaned it, dug it out, they had to pull it out with firemen's hooks, because they couldn't get there, it was about 4 meters, so tucked away. But the ravages of time. The sand was falling and the corner was visible. So they pulled her out with those hooks, and you know what they found? In that chest, or the box, which was about 30 by 10, just like that, they found all the gold things, silver rings, bracelets and watches, in short, everything that was... Well, now, the police immediately confiscated it all and somehow, they started there... then they didn't let us do it there, so they somehow dug it up and took it here to Úštěk. And so the box was, there was a letter on top, that's what they told us afterwards. There was a letter, it was from two SS men who served as leaders in Terezín in a... concentration camp... and there they robbed people who went to the gas chambers. Well, the policemen or the SS men had access to it, so what they had... even the teeth were there, the rings and everything, so they took it away and the two SS men were from […](not understandable, editor's note) and you were there they just put it in that box. And there was also a letter saying that they would meet after the war, that they mustn't tell anyone about it, and that after the war, that they would come to an agreement and that they would drive to get it."

  • “The traveling inn. He was there normally... just barns. It was owned by two Germans who went to war but never returned. And there were two women of German nationality in that inn. They stayed there for a while longer, about 2-3 more months, than the transports, although it was not a sudden removal of the Germans, it was organized, maybe 3 or 4 transports, maybe more. So the German women kept hanging on there, thinking that the Germans, the SS men, would come back, that they would meet somehow. But that didn't happen, and when they really had to leave, their time... simply ran out, so they had to leave. In short, they had to... but such a thing happened. The German women... how should I say it... how they were forced... so there was a well. It was deep, at that time they said it was about 25 meters deep. And into that well they threw all the things that were more expensive, that could be stolen, they threw them there as if out of anger, and finally the two of them jumped there, into that well. Where they drowned, of course. It stuck there, it was a big affair. They probably pulled out the Germans. Then they filled up the well. For a long time, it was still called "The Crematorium.”

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    Úštěk, 15.03.2018

    (audio)
    délka: 01:05:39
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Let the war never happen again

Whitness - Soldier in the army
Whitness - Soldier in the army
zdroj: Archiv pamětníka

Josef Veselý was born on October 5, 1931 in Ostrov district Vlašim. The father was a blacksmith and the mother was a housewife. He had a total of 6 siblings, 2 brothers and 3 sisters, he was the eldest son. He and his parents later moved to Čechtice, where he went to a general school and later to a higher school. He experienced the wartime in Čechtice. As a schoolboy, he saw with his own eyes how the Germans executed the entire town council, including his class teacher. After the controlled removal of Germans from the borderlands, the father responded to the call for settlement. He and his family took over a blacksmith‘s workshop and a house in Úštěk - here the witness learned blacksmithing from his father and lived here until the war. He got married at the age of 21, has 2 children, a son and a daughter, 4 grandchildren and 8 great-grandchildren. He settled down with his family and lived in a house in Kravaře all his life. He worked in a quarry for 40 years. After retiring at the age of 60, he worked for the next 25 years as a sewage treatment plant operator. Mr. Veselý was an active communist and a member of the National Committee in Kravaře for 5 years.