Pravoslav Batěk

* 1921  †︎ 2017

  • “There were certain people, who were known to do it in future, and their goal was Oldřichovice, where they could sleep over or stay at Krsta in the woods and they knew that they´d find protection, food and some stocks. Many of the tracks were lined also by the general Luža, who actually secretly crossed the borders from Germany to Bohemia and stopped here for a while saying, if we were ok with the fact they orient many people to Oldřichovice, and we replied that we feel good about helping them so had kind of a special relation with Luža.”

  • “Generál Luža founded the Council of three, they were the generals, who lived in Czech-Moravian Vysočina and they conducted resistance and determined people where to go; those who considered Bohemia and Moravia only a transient area to be able to move further on. And he remained in the Vysočina and was chased by our policemen and during a shooting was also shot dead. We were terribly touched, as he didn´t deserve it from the Czechs. If it were Germans, well all right, but from his own people? Those were policemen just fulfilling orders.”

  • “I graduated in 1940 and then got involved in the first resistence activities, first we guarded the radio by Mr. Hodný, which was in a rock above Napajedla, from where it broadcasted, and my father and I walked as guards checking if it was not leaked and one day we found out that the rock has been ambushed by policemen, and him with the wife were arrested and executed both in Napajedla as a warning.“

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    veselí nad moravou, 08.04.2015

    (audio)
    duration: 02:38:28
    media recorded in project Stories of 20th Century
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No one knew, what move to make

Batěk_pozadovany_orez_na_dobovy_portret.jpg (historic)
Pravoslav Batěk
photo: vlastní

Pravoslav Batěk was born on 21 September, 1921 in Hodonín, where his father worked as a teacher. Later the family moved to Oldřichovice near Napajedla, where his father worked as a school director. The witness finished an elementary school in Napajedla and then applied for a teacher´s institute in Kroměříž, where he graduated in 1940. After graduation Pravoslav Batěk began forced labour in Napajedla, Hodonín and other places. In 1942 he was established a teaching trainee in Napajedla. During war the Batěks joined the resistance; they cooperated with a general Vojtěch B. Luža. After an agreement they helped refugees, brought immigrants across the German border and worked as a connection with partisans in the neighbourhood. Since August 1944 until the end of war the Batěks were hiding a Soviet partisan, Valentina Tumiska, who also joined the resistance. In 1943 the witness married Věra Žďárová and had three children. After war he worked as a teacher, but for refusing to enter the communist party, they moved around several times and his children had to leave the high school studies. In 1953 the family was violently displaced to Střílky, where they lived, to Veselí nad Moravou to a gypsy colony, where they stayed for a while. The sister Vlasta was imprisoned and charged with organising border crossings, but during the prison transfer she managed to escape and in 1951 immigrated to USA. Also due to this fact the family was constantly persecuted. Pravoslav Batěk retired in 1981. In 2005 he got an acknowledgement from the Czech minister of defence and in 2015 was awarded a Russian federation medal as a war veteran. Pravoslav Batěk passed away on May, the 25th, 2017.