František Chmelař

* 1939

  • "But they agreed, for example, that he would knock three times or so and that he would open for him. No everyone opened. Dad did, because then he was in some committee, this was already arranged before 1945, because the first Revolutionary Committee of the National Committee was in the village. The secret meeting of May 2, 1945 and May 6, that is, it was not made public right away. But since mid-April 1945, our region has witnessed the retreat of Germany civilians towards the west."

  • It happened that at night someone was knocking on the window. So dad went there in a hurry, and they, the partisans, who merged and moved towards those villages, because it was the war of 1937 in the years and 1938. So they were preparing for the approaching front and building foresters in the forests of Bohdalov in the gardens, wherever possible. So even the food was buried, for example, in pits, in chests lined with straw. And those who visited those cottages, as they were called, so they were simply always afraid when someone knocked, so they agreed that knocking three times meant a partisan.

  • ”I was born on November 5, 1939, in the family of a peasant in Chroustov, registration number 33. And there I spent my entire youth. And then I only went to school there for one year, then the general school in Chroustov was canceled and I went to Bohdalov. It was a bit of a snag in the winter because the road was covered in snow, and some winters it snowed down really heavily and we walked in the fields. And we also happened to go in groups, of course. We came to Bohdalov and we didn't have the smallest boy anywhere and we had to go back to find him. That was one thing. After that, when a car swept through the road, it was in school in Bohdalov, so we rode a sleigh in the winter and someone was driving skates in front. He put on skates because there was no traffic in Chroustov-Bohdalov road. They only rode there with horses for milk in the morning.”

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    22.11.2021

    (audio)
    duration: 01:47:41
    media recorded in project The Stories of Our Neigbours
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Guerrilla always knocked three times

František Chmelař
František Chmelař
photo: Paměť národa

František Chmelař was born on November 5, 1939 in a peasant family in Chroustov, where he also spent his entire youth. He lived his childhood during the Second World War, during which his father was in contact with the partisans and helped them. He graduated from the Secondary Technical School in Čáslav, worked for example in sports and then at the Žďas company, which he participated in building. In the second half of the 1950s, he completed compulsory military service with the tankers in Vyškov. Then he returned to Žďas again. He worked as a chronicler of the village of Bohdalov for many years, he wrote the chronicle from 1997 to 2015. In 2021 he lived in Bohdanov.