Vojtěch Strauss

* 1947

  • “Three families from Zvolenice u Prahy moved to us. There was a grandfather, father and son. Each of them took over one farm which had been left behind by the Germans. Pigs, cows, barns full of fodder, granaries above the houses full of grain, and a system wooden pipes ran through it and there was a crusher under it. It was for grinding fodder for pigs. Everything was furnished in a modern way. The cows had no troughs, but metal feeding devices were already fitted there. The farm was furnished with modern equipment. They took over it. Within three years they brought all farms to naught and when there was nothing left, they turned it into an agricultural cooperative.”

  • “My eldest uncle; I have not seen him alive, he was thirty-five and he had died before I was born. That was because they drafted men below the age of thirty. They arrived to him and questioned him how come that he was not doing anything. Men in leather coats arrived in a roofless car when he was cutting wood. Since he was a communist, somebody turned him in and they arrested him and took him away. Nobody knew about him. Only in the last year before the war ended, two guys from Slovakia arrived and he had been with the partisans and he had been shot to death. They brought us his ‘ausweis,’ something like an identity card, and a map. There were bullet holes in it. They gave it to us and they left. They did not say anything. Meaning that he had been buried there.”

  • “One day we went to change shifts and there was no car. And so they assigned us an armoured four-wheeled vehicle, which was nicknamed Fuk. We were not able to drive up the Jáchymov Hill. We thus had to return to Ostrov and take the back route via Merklín and the other place. Snow began falling and the car had small windows like this, and I was sitting up there and sweeping the snow from the windows. We arrived up there and a deer jumped in front of the car and as we had our headlights on, it was staring at us. I said: ‘Quickly, pass me the…’ He asked: ‘What do you want?’ I said: ‘The submachine gun, you blockhead!’ Before I could load it, the deer jumped away and he was gone.”

  • Full recordings
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    v Mostě, 22.02.2016

    (audio)
    duration: 02:20:04
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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And it was beautiful, because all this was an experience

Vojtěch Strauss
Vojtěch Strauss
photo: Pamět Národa - Archiv

Vojtěch Strauss was born in Židovice near Most on October 5, 1947, one hour earlier than his twin brother. His father Adolf was a Sudeten German and he worked as a miner. His mother Vilma came from Slovakia. Part of the family stayed in Czechoslovakia after the war and part moved to Germany. The property of Vojtěch’s parents and grandparents was confiscated. Vojtěch attended the elementary school in Židovice and in Bečov, then he apprenticed as a miner and locksmith and he began working in the mine in Kopisty. When he was fifty years old, he had accumulated so much overtime work that he had to retire. Even after his retirement, he continued working as a gatekeeper, in a heat exchanger station, and in his last job he was helping in his son’s butcher’s shop. With his wife Jiřina they have three children: Vojtěch, Jiřinka, and Rudolf. Mr. and Mrs. Strauss now live in a retirement home in Most.