Jiří Bouše

* 1934

  • "Well, we used to go among them, they had a kitchen there, a bakery, in Lnáry, in the meadows, so we used to go there, we got canned food, like boys, we got chocolate, an orange - I didn't remember an orange, I was a kid before the war, I didn't remember that, there were no oranges during the whole war, and then they had fresh oranges and they gave them to the children..."

  • " And in our house they settled there /Vlasovites/ with a field kitchen right next to the house, next to the garden there was a little hill, there they stopped with a wagon with a field kitchen. During the morning they brought there, I don't know if it was half a beef or half a horse, they just started to make goulash, they had the field kitchen on the wagon, suddenly there was a panic among them, that the Russians were coming from the north and they were running away from them. They threw the kitchen off the wagon, hitched up the horses and left, drove off, poured the stew there, no grass grew there until winter..."

  • "My father had a special job that no longer exists today, he was a grocer buyer. He used to go around the villages in the area, buying eggs, poultry, butter and such small agricultural products, which he took to the market in Pilsen once a week. He had a carriage, a horse and with that horse he would ride 42 kilometres to the market in Pilsen."

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    Cheb, 16.06.2022

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They all let that Vaníček live there, Germans and Americans alike. It wasn’t until the Communists evicted him

Jiří Bouše in 2022
Jiří Bouše in 2022
photo: Memory of Nations

Jiří Bouše was born on 14 February 1934 in Nepomuk, but grew up in Zahorčice. His father was one of 18 children who grew up on the family mill. He has many memories of the Second World War, he experienced coal holidays and refugees staying at the school, he remembers a plane being shot down and the arrival of the hairdressers. After the war, his father lost his trade and Jiří Bouše became an electrician. He enlisted in 1954 in the civil defence unit in Prague, they were supposed to guard important nodes such as factories, government buildings, etc. The next year they were moved to Kutná Hora to the dissolved Voršilek monastery, from where he has a curious story, when they searched in the deserted monastery for the mass wine, but found instead the walled up valuables. He worked all his life in the working professions, for example in the Škoda factory. In 2022, he lived in Nova Rola in the Karlovy Vary region.