Bruno Brych

* 1938

  • "Some were such that it suited them, the regime, because they could do everything, they also had guns and all that. And we somehow survived him, we somehow endured it with them. And then, when this opportunity came to show, I was in the construction, there were about fifteen of us. We didn't do anything, we just painted posters, we praised Dubček and so on. We hung out posters… or even Russian transports as they drove, so we pasted signs like 'Ivan, go home! on the backs’ and similar stuff. There was a star on the roof, such a large structure, and whenever the monthly plan was fulfilled, the star shone. We immediately threw it down. But then the plan came true even without the star."

  • "After the liberation, when the Soviet troops liberated the area here, then in September I started going to the Czech school in the second grade and I did not know a word of Czech. I looked and didn't know what to do. With Dad there was sometimes some Czech, but Mum could not speak it at all. That's how she taught me Czech, even though she didn't know it herself, that's how it looked. So there were problems, the German was so much fixed there. Gradually it changed, sometimes the children laughed at me that I was reading a sentences incorrectly, it was a train, simple 'v' in German 'f', so it was still there. Well, then I got out of it, I went upstairs and the breaking point came in fifth grade."

  • "There were a lot of prisoners in Mimon. They were English, Russian, French, most of them were in fact Russians and French. And they were employed in various jobs in Mimon. ´You'll do it, you'll dig like the yellow vests here.´ That's what the convicts did, and then they always locked them up somewhere in the evening. And there was one who rode with a upholstery in town with horses and they needed horseshoes. So Dad came, he did these little things on the sidewalk outside on the road normally. The horse was very restless, and he said: 'It's dangerous for a blacksmith to be kicked and killed by a horse.' So he said: 'Look, Ivan, get up here.' And Grandpa held the horse's leg, and Dad forged. A stubborn SS man went there and said… I'll say it, I'm sorry, as it was said, 'Why is that Russian swine standing here on the sidewalk and you work for him here?' And Dad said: ´He is no swine, but just a man as any other. And the point here is that the horse could kill someone, because they are very restless.' The result was that Dad went digging anti-tank trenches in Poland for saying that."

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    Nový Bor, 15.11.2019

    (audio)
    duration: 01:23:01
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Some people liked the regime, we somehow survived

Bruno Brych in the second half of 1950s
Bruno Brych in the second half of 1950s
photo: archiv pamětníka

Bruno Brych was born on September 11, 1938 in Brniště near Česká Lípa. He came from a mixed family, his mother was German and his father Czech. He spent his childhood in Mimň in the Sudetenland; his father was totally deployed in 1944 to work on digging trenches at the front. At the very end of the war, the witness experienced the Soviet bombing of Mimoň. The family did not have to be deported, but Bruno had to learn Czech. He graduated from an industrial high school. He served in military in Valašské Meziříčí. From 1974 until his retirement, he worked in the research department of the Crystalex glassworks in Nový Bor.