Václav Vlach

* 1947

  • “I never joined the Communist Party because my parents were persecuted in 1950. They were peasants. At that time, we had our own 27 hectares and the rest were leased – it was some kind of municipal land. About 50 hectares in total. And in that fiftieth year, JZD was founded. Father and grandfather said that they would come to an agreement together with five other farmers and establish a cooperative of owners. We got our mechanization and money together and we were quite successful then. Animals were born, preserved, grain grew. We filled deliveries for half a village. There were fifteen peasants and we were the biggest. There were 360 hectares. We had 50 hectares and others had the rest. And for half a village, we filled supplies in meat, milk, and eggs."

  • "Then they told us no. They sent us an assessment according to section 55 of the collection from 1947 or 1948, that all our property, houses, fields, tools, livestock, etc., were being confiscated. And within two months they evicted us to the border area. First down to South Moravia, then in two years to Jeseníky. Horror, pure terror it was..."

  • "In 1968, at the instigation of a gamekeeper, who was an acquaintance of mine, (we went to the Soviets). He pulled out two flintlocks – World War II German Model 1898 carbines. He gave me nine rounds and we walked about five hundred meters. There was a road on which a column of Russian vehicles was driving. We waited for them for about two and a half hours. He said they were going because they were carrying something there. They drove uphill. He climbed over to the other side. It was a valley. I was in a deep forest, where there was an undergrowth of spruce trees, and I hid behind a thick spruce tree. There were also morels in front of me. I mounted a cut-off bottle of some sort of detergent on the barrel so that the flame could not be seen. When it is fired, it flashes and they could detect you. It was after rain, so there was such a haze. The convoy drove uphill, slowly, about fifteen cars. I shot at the truck to shoot it through. To the tarp, where there were probably some crates. I had three incendiary rounds. There was white phosphorus and then only armor-piercing. Nine bullets. I fired eight, keeping one in case they popped. They had automatic weapons. We only had five-shot repeaters. He shot from the other side. Nothing exploded. The column passed and the war was over... I don't think they even found out."

  • Celé nahrávky
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    Rajnochovice, 04.04.2019

    (audio)
    délka: 02:21:44
    nahrávka pořízena v rámci projektu The Stories of Our Neigbours
Celé nahrávky jsou k dispozici pouze pro přihlášené uživatele.

Honor and protect, what nature has created; let that, hunter, be your first law.

Václav Vlach at the age of three
Václav Vlach at the age of three
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Václav Vlach was born on February 9, 1947 in the border town of Horní Vražné, in the district of Nový Jičín, where his parents Václav and Anna, née Krajčová, came already in June 1945. When he was two years old, they moved to Dolní Rudná. Here the family soon lost their acquired property. They farmed on fifty hectares, but since the grandfather and father did not want to join the JZD, but wanted to establish their own cooperative of owners, they were labeled as village rich people and lost everything. After the trial of the father and grandfather, who got away with almost one-year sentences, the family from Dolní Rudná was moved to Javůrka, in the district of Brno. During his father‘s imprisonment, Václav lived with his grandmother Marie in Vranov nad Dyjí. But after my father‘s return, they moved on. Father was often transferred from one state farm to another. Václav graduated from primary school in Červená Voda in Jesenice. They also lived in Ústí nad Orlicí and Předhradí in the Chrudim region. After elementary school, he entered the Forestry Vocational School in Svoboda nad Úpou in Podkrkonoší for two years. He then worked as a forest worker for two years at the Vysoké Chvojno Forest Plant and for a short time in Deštné in Orlické hory. Between 1967 and 1969, he increased his qualifications at the forestry master school in Vimperek in Šumava. After a five-year break in Vizovice in the first years of normalization, he then only worked at a sawmill in Rajnochovice. He retired as expedition master in 2006. In the years of the Velvet Revolution, he became a member of the Rajnochovcei cell of the Civic Forum.