I heard a bomb whistle. And I thought, it is flying straight at me
Miloslav Čermák was born on August 3, 1928 in the town of Luka nad Jihlavou into the family of a small tradesman. A family with two children owned a house with a grocery store and a small farm in Lukach. After primary school, the first-born Miloslav wanted to study at a grammar school, but after the occupation of Czechoslovakia by Nazi Germany and the establishment of a protectorate, the grammar school in nearby Jihlava was closed for Czech children. The German employment office also refused to study at the Business Academy and sent him to a two-year Business School. He also had to leave here after a year. In September 1944 he was sent to forced labor at the BMW factory in Jihlava. He remained there until the beginning of March 1945 and was subsequently transported to Brno, where the Germans were preparing to defend against the approaching Red Army, and sixteen-year-old Miloslav Čermák was forced to help build trench fortifications. He experienced many air alarms and subsequent bombings in Jihlava and Brno. He was under a direct death threat during the raid on Brno on April 12, 1945. It was the last raid before the arrival of the front, when life in Brno remained completely paralyzed. Miloslav Čermák, together with several other boys, decided on a dangerous and then relatively dramatic escape home. The last days of the war he hid in Luky nad Jihlavou and experienced the retreat of German troops and the arrival of the Red Army. After the war, he graduated from the Business Academy and continued at the University of Economics in Brno. Due to the changes that took place in 1948, he left the school voluntarily and decided to study at the Czech Technical University in Prague. He served in the war with artillerymen in 1952-54. After the war, he began working in foreign trade, negotiating contracts for the construction of Czechoslovak power plants. He refused to join the Communist Party for the rest of his life, although membership in the party was a condition for traveling abroad. Nevertheless, he eventually traveled to many countries around the world. And only thanks to his professional and, above all, extraordinary language skills. He is now retired, married, and has raised two children with his wife. He lives in Kladno. Under the collective title The War Years of the Louky Boy, he wrote down his memories of childhood and adolescence in detail. They are full of authentic experiences presented in historical contexts and supplemented by unique photographs from the liberation of Louky nad Jihlavou.