Jiří Baumruk

* 1950

  • "It was such a time after the revolution. A German called Patočka, got the position of deputy director and he knew that I was in the Communist party, in the militia and so on... So on Monday I was called in, and I was told that I would have to leave the OSP. I wasn't even allowed to take the box I had locked in the garage, as they were watching me. And within a week I got a 'fired' stamp. I was without a job, without money, one daughter in Prague at school and the other was in Tábor. We didn't have enough money for food. Because I was building a house. It was terrible."

  • "I was also in charge of faeces. So I drove the faecal truck around doing what needed to be done. Pumping out flooded canals, and things like that. Well, I had plenty of time to do other things. The boys asked me to bring a case of beer, because the Czechoslovakia-Hungary football game was on TV that evening. So we turned on the TV and closed the blinds. But the supervisor walked by and he saw the TV flickering through the blinds. He banged on the door. Well, of course, we were drunk. 'Who brought it in? Who brought it?' 'Well, it was Baumruk.' The next day I went to interrogation and I was sent to jail. But they couldn't lock me up because nobody knew my job. So I went to jail with a blanket. For ten days. And I was reminded of these ten days for the rest of the military service."

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    Tachov, 08.11.2021

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    duration: 01:20:08
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I’d still be in the People’s Militia if it hadn’t ended

Jiří Baumruk, 1970
Jiří Baumruk, 1970
photo: archiv pamětníka

Jiří Baumruk was born on 10 January 1950. The family was affected by the Second World War. His uncle Bohuslav Baumruk died while serving in the 311th Czechoslovak Bomber Squadron of the Royal Air Force. His father Jaroslav Baumruk was imprisoned with other family members in the internment camp in Svatobořice near Brno and after the war he supervised the operation of the assembly camp in Skláry, intended for the German-speaking population awaiting deportation to Germany. Jiří Baumruk trained as a plumber and after finishing school he entered compulsory military service. He started out in the army with the engineers and was subsequently transferred to the military buildings administration, where he was imprisoned for ten days for drinking alcohol and watching football match. After the completion of his military service, he became one of the few people in Czechoslovakia to work with copper pipes. He married and joined the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia in 1974. He was a member of the People’s Militia and in November 1989 he was transferred to Prague, where he awaited deployment. In 1991 he lost his job, in his opinion because of his pre-November activities. He worked in Germany for five years and then at the Housing Cooperative in Tachov, where he carried out inspections of flats. In 2021 he was living in his house in Tachov.