Milan Vlček

* 1934

  • „Pořád neměli žádný důkaz, a už tam byla skoro rok. Když jsem přišel na návštěvu s konvičkou a krajícem chleba, tak mě říká: ,Milo, tady je na dvoře šibenice a slyšíme hlasy: „Zadržte, jsme nevinní!".´ Ale to se popravovali opravdoví kolaboranti, kteří něco provedli. Ovšem oni jako vězni to přijímali krutě."

  • „To si pamatuju. V devětatřicátým jsem byl ve školce. Učitelka nás všechny vyzvala, abychom se šli podívat, co se děje. A tak jsme viděli, že v Olomouci od Envelopy přijížděli trény vojska německého. Stáli jsme v takovém podchodu dnešního nového soudu, takže jsme viděli. Byli jsme výš, takže jsme viděli, jak přijíždí. A jeli směrem na Ostravu."

  • “I set out toward Javoříčko. When I was nearing the first building coming from Luká, a machine gun barked out from the direction of Střemeníčko and several bullets whizzed by me. I was walking along the edge of the road, and I had to good sense to jump into the ditch. Shaking with fear I climbed into the concrete pipe under a field access ramp. How long was I there? The sun was almost at its peak, so I estimated it was around noon. The shooting began to cease, with just the occasional shot now and then.”

  • “I saw the dead bodies of men that I knew. The first was my neighbour, whom I’d warned. When I arrived at the first ruins of a building, I found out that apart from the school, the hotel, and the gamekeeper’s lodge, blackened walls and chimneys were all that remained of the other buildings. It was a terrifying sight, and the uncertainty of whether I would see Mum and Grandma, as my father wasn’t with us. I was the first to come to the village because I couldn’t see or hear anyone else. It wasn’t until a good bit later that they arrived with Dolfy in the pram and joyful embracing began.”

  • “Mum immediately put on black gossamer as a sign of mourning, and within a week she was summoned to the Gestapo. She came there and the Gestapo officer roared: ‘How dare you? An enemy of the state, and you’re wearing a black veil for him. If you don’t take it off right now, you’ll go where he went.’ Mum came home, she took it off, and she didn’t even wear a black band on her sleeve. Some time later we were tidying up the flat, and we found a leaflet behind one of the wardrobes. She worked out that he had been doing anti-Nazi activities. I don’t know if she met with someone else from the group that distributed the leaflets, but in the end she began distributing them herself.”

  • “I personally honoured and continue to honour his views. I took an interest in him back when he was in prison. When he was later elected president, his main notion was to inform the whole world that there’s this place called Czechoslovakia here in the middle of Europe and that it’s inhabited by people, not some kind of Neanderthals; and he did this unforced kind of connecting. Someone recently said that he didn’t do anything for the country, that he did things for the world. How could anyone say something like that?”

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To escape the Gestapo and the horrors of the war they hid in Javoříčko, which was burnt down by an SS commando unit on 5 May 1945

Milan Vlček
Milan Vlček
zdroj: archiv pamětníka

Milan Vlček was born on 27 January 1934 in Přerov. His mother Emílie Vlčková secretly distributed anti-Nazi leaflets during the war. An informant told on her and she spent several months in prison. When she came home half dead, she decided to find refuge in the village of Javoříčko in the secluded forests of the Bouzov Heights. She wanted to protect herself and her ten-year-old son from the Gestapo and the horrors of the war. But the peaceful village soon changed. In February 1945 members of the Jermak-Fursenko partisan brigade chose Javoříčko as one of their bases, and they started to cooperate with several of the local families. On 5 May 1945 the small village was surrounded by Lieutenant Egon Lüdemann‘s special operations SS commando unit. His men began systematically burning down the village‘s houses and murdering the men one group at a time. In this way they shot 38 men aged 15 to 75. That fateful day, Milan Vlček had left to buy meat from the butcher‘s in Luká, four kilometres away. He was almost shot on the way back. He hid in a concrete ring for several hours before returning to the burnt-down wreck of Javoříčko, where he met his mother and saw with his own eyes the atrocities perpetrated in the village. After the war the family returned to Olomouc, where Milan Vlček lived until 1990. He now lives in Moravská Huzová.